The Under Dog | Page 6

would fight the air with its little fists or kick its toes above its head.
The girl took from the kennel a broken paper box and, returning with it, knelt beside the child and began arranging its wardrobe, the two negresses watching her listlessly. Not much of a wardrobe--only a ragged shawl, some socks, a worsted cap, a pair of tiny shoes, and a Canton-flannel wrapper, once white. This last had little arms and a short waist. The skirt was long enough to tuck around her baby's feet when she carried it.
I steadied myself by one of the musket-barrels, watched her while she folded the few pitiful garments, waited until she had guided the shrunken arms into the sleeves of the soiled wrapper and had buttoned it over the baby's chest. Then, when the lump in my throat was about to stop my breathing, I said:
"Will you come here, please, to the grating? I want to speak to you."
She raised her head slowly, looked at me in a tired, hopeless way, laid her baby back on the sheet-iron floor, and walked toward me. As she came into the glow of the overhead light, I saw that she was even younger than I had first supposed--nearer seventeen than twenty--a girl with something of the curious look of a young heifer in a face drawn and lined but with anxiety. Parted over a low forehead, and tucked behind her ears, streamed two braids of straight yellow hair in two unkempt strands over her shoulders. Across her bosom and about her slender figure was hooked a yellow-brown dress made in one piece. The hooks and eyes showed wherever the strain came, disclosing the coarse chemise and the brown of the neck beneath. This strain, the strain of an ill-fitting garment, accentuated all the clearer, in the wrinkles about the shoulders and around the hips, the fulness of her delicately modelled lines; quite as would a jacket buttoned over the Milo. On the third finger of one hand was a flat silver ring, such as is sold by the country peddlers.
She stood quite close to the bars, patiently awaiting my next question. She had obeyed my summons like a dog who remembered a former discipline. No curiosity, not the slightest interest; nothing but blind obedience. The tightened grasp of these four walls had taught her this.
"Where do you come from?" I asked.
I had to begin in some way.
"From Pineyville." The voice was that of a child, with a hard, dry note in it.
"How old is the baby?"
"Three months and ten days." She had counted the child's age. She had thought enough for that.
"How far is Pineyville?"
"I doan' know. It took mos' all night to git here." There was no change in the listless monotone.
"Are you going out now?"
"Yes, soon's I kin git ready."
"How are you going to get home?"
"Walk, I reckon." There was no complaint in her tone, no sudden exhibition of any suffering. She was only stating facts.
"Have you no money?"
"No." Same bald statement, and in the same hopeless tone. She had not moved--not even to look at the child.
"What's the fare?"
"Six dollars and sixty-five cents." This was stated with great exactness. It was the amount of this appalling sum that had, no doubt, crushed out her last ray of hope.
"Did you sell any whiskey?"
"Yes, I tol' the Judge so." Still no break in her voice. It was only another statement.
"Oh! you kept a saloon?"
"No."
"How did you sell it, then?"
"Jest out of a kag--in a cup."
"Had you ever sold any before?"
"No."
"Why did you sell it, then?"
She had been looking into my face all this time, one thin, begrimed hand--the one with the ring on it--tight around the steel bar of the gate that divided us. With the question, her eyes dropped until they seemed to rest on this hand. The answer came slowly:
"The baby come, and the store wouldn't chalk nothin' for us no more." Then she added, quickly, as if in defence of the humiliating position, "Our corn-crib was sot afire last fall and we got behind."
For a brief instant she leaned heavily against the bars as if for support, then her eyes sought her child. I waited until she had reassured herself of its safety, and continued my questions, my finger-nails sinking deeper all the time into the palms of my hands.
"Did you make the whiskey?"
"No, it was Martin Young's whiskey. My husband works for him. Martin sent the kag down one day, and I sold it to the men. I give the money all to Martin 'cept the dollar he was to gimme for sellin' it."
"How came you to be arrested?"
"One o' the men tol' on me 'cause I wouldn't trust him. Martin tol' me not to let 'em have it 'thout they paid."
"How long have you been here?"
"Three months next