The Enchanted Canyon | Page 2

eased his mind, Luigi proceeded to drag the sack into the basement and slammed the door.
"Nucky! Nucky! He's onlucky!" sang one of the small girls on the crumbling steps.
"You dry up, you little alley cat!" roared the boy.
"You're just a bastard!" screamed the child, while her playmates took up the cry.
Nucky lighted a fresh cigarette and moved hurriedly up toward MacDougal Street. Once having turned the corner, he slackened his gait and climbed into an empty chair in the bootblack stand that stood in front of the Caf�� Roma. The bootblack had not finished the first shoe when a policeman hoisted himself into the other chair.
"How are you, Nucky?" he grunted.
"All right, thanks," replied the boy, an uneasy look softening his cold eyes for the moment.
"Didn't keep the job I got you, long," the officer said. "What was the rip this time?"
"Aw, I ain't goin' to hold down ho five-dollar-a-week job. What do you think I am?"
"I think you are a fool headed straight for the devil," answered the officer succinctly. "Now listen to me, Nucky. I've knowed you ever since you started into the school over there. I mind how the teacher told me she was glad to see one brat that looked like an old-fashioned American. And everything the teachers and us guys at the police station could do to keep you headed right, we've done. But you just won't have it. You've growed up with just the same ideas the young toughs have 'round here. All you know about earnin' money is by gambling." Nucky stirred, but the officer put out his hand.
"Hold on now, fer I'm servin' notice on you. You've turned down every job we got you. You want to keep on doing Luigi's dirty work for him. Very well! Go to it! And the next time we get the goods on you, you'll get the limit. So watch yourself!"
"Everybody's against a guy!" muttered the boy,
"Everybody's against a fool that had rather be crooked than straight," returned the officer.
Nucky, his face sullen, descended from the chair, paid the boy and headed up MacDougal Street toward the Square.
A tall, dark woman, dressed in black entered the Square as Nucky crossed from Fourth Street. Nucky overtook her.
"Are you comin' round to-night, Liz?" he asked.
She looked at him with liquid brown eyes over her shoulder.
"Anything better there than there was last night?" she asked.
Nucky nodded eagerly. "You'll be surprised when you see the bird I got lined up."
Liz looked cautiously round the park, at the children shouting on the wet pavements, at the sparrows quarreling in the dirty snow drifts. Then she started, nervously, along the path.
"There comes Foley!" she exclaimed. "What's he doin' off his beat?"
"He's seen us now," said Nucky. "We might as well stand right here."
"Oh, I ain't afraid of that guy!" Liz tossed her head. "I got things on him, all right."
"Why don't you use 'em?" Nucky's voice was skeptical. "He's going down Waverly Place, the blank, blank!"
Liz grunted. "He's got too much on me! I ain't hopin' to start trouble. You go chase yourself, Nucky. I'll be round about midnight."
Nucky's chasing himself consisted of the purchase of a newspaper which he read for a few minutes in the sunshine of the park. Even as he sat on the park bench, apparently absorbed in the paper, there was an air of sullen unhappiness about the boy. Finally, he tossed the paper aside, and sat with folded arms, his chin on his breast.
Officer Foley, standing on the corner of Washington Place and MacDougal Street waved a pleasant salute to a tall, gray-haired man whose automobile drew up before the corner apartment house.
"How are you, Mr. Seaton?" he asked.
"Rather used up, Foley!" replied the gentleman, "Rather used up! Aren't you off your beat?"
The officer nodded. "Had business up here and started back. Then I stopped to watch that red-headed kid over there." He indicated the bench on which Nucky sat, all unconscious of the sharp eyes fastened on his back.
"I see the red hair, anyway,"--Mr. Seaton lighted a cigar and puffed it slowly. He and Foley had been friends during Seaton's twenty years' residence on the Square.
"I know you ain't been keen on boys since you lost Jack," the officer said, slowly, "but--well, I can't get this young Nucky off my mind, blast the little crook!"
"So he's a crook, is he? How old is the boy?"
"Oh, 'round fourteen! He's as smart as lightning and as crooked as he is smart. He turned up here when he was a little kid, with a woman who may or may not have been his mother. She lived with a Dago down in Minetta Lane. Guess the boy mighta been six years old when she died and Luigi took him on. We were all kind of proud of him at