“Mrs. Joe Carrol?” he asked politely.
The girl nodded.
“Sorry,” said Bob McKenzie, “but I’m the county sheriff and I—”
The girl did not wait for the sheriff to finish. She seized him by the arm and led him around back of the cabin to a mound of fresh earth, at one end of which stood a pine slab inscribed “Joe Carrol.” She sank down on her knees beside the mound and sobbed hysterically.
“Joe’s dead!” she wailed. “Joe’s dead!”
Sheriff McKenzie, hat in hand, stared at the newly-made grave a few moments, then, his blue eyes somber, he raised the girl to her feet and led her to a pine log a few feet from the grave, where he sat beside her in the brilliant mountain sunshine.
“I’m sorry,” he said apologetically.
The girl dried her eyes.
“It ain’t your fault,” she sighed brokenly. “It’s them Chicago bulls. I knew they’d be after Joe.”
She looked at the grave.
“Let them get him now,” she added resignedly.
The sheriff puffed his cigar.
“How did Joe get mixed up in that Chicago affair?” he asked.
The girl brushed her black bobbed hair out of her eyes.
“If was over a crucifix,” she replied soberly.
“A crucifix?”
“Yuh. You know — one o’ them crosses Christ is nailed to.”
She turned to the sheriff.
“Ever been in Pete Mongone’s cabaret on State Street?” she asked.
The sheriff shook his head.
“I ain’t been around Chicago much,” he admitted.
The girl’s lips came together in a straight line.
“You ain’t missed much,” she remarked moodily. She studied the ground. “Anyways,” she went on, “me and Joe Carrol done a double hoofin’ turn at Pete Mongone’s cabaret before we was married. After we was married I quit and Joe worked alone.”
She squeezed her handkerchief into a tiny ball.
“We had a baby,” she said dully, “but he died. Then Joe got sick and I had to go to work in Pete Mongone’s again. I got thirty a week for a single, and I thought we could get by on that until Joe got better. Only he didn’t get better. He got worse. The doctor said it was his lungs. On top o’ that—”
Her lips quivered.
“Pete Mongone begun gettin’ fresh,” she continued with an effort. “I told him where to head in, but I couldn’t ride him too hard, because if I did I knew he’d fire me. He took me home every night after the cabaret closed, and when I wouldn’t stand in the hallway with him he started comin’ into the flat with me.”
The girl looked up at the sheriff.
“What could I do?” she asked helplessly. “If I locked him out he’d have canned me, so I had to let him in. He came in nearly every night, and whenever Joe was awake he used to go into the bedroom and kid him. That was how Pete got wise to Joe’s crucifix.”
She folded her wet handkerchief on her knee and stared straight ahead at a thick grove of pine trees about fifty yards away.
II
“When Joe was a kid,” she said, “his mother gave him a crucifix. She told him as long as he kept it everything would be jake, so even though Joe got sicker and sicker he thought he wouldn’t die as long as he had that crucifix.
“The doctor told him he was slippin’, but Joe only laughed at him. He kept his crucifix under his pillow all the time, and one night when Pete Mongone came into the bedroom he showed it to him.
“ ‘I won’t croak as long as I have that, Pete,’ he says.
“Well, Pete falls for all Joe tells him about that crucifix.
“The next thing I knew Pete starts rushin’ me harder’n ever. I can’t shake him because I’m afraid o’ losin’ my job, but Pete don’t get that through his thick head. Because I’m halfway decent to him, he thinks I’m in love with him!”
Mrs. Joe Carrol’s lip curled.
“Me in love with him!” she jeered. “Feature it! But Pete Mongone thinks I am and, worse and more of it, he thinks I’ll marry him if Joe dies. He even has the nerve to tell me so!”
The cabaret girl bit her lip, and Sheriff McKenzie followed her steady gaze to the clean, fragrant pine grove far from Pete Mongone’s State Street cabaret. She seemed lost in a reverie as the wind sighed in the pines and a blackbird trilled from the top of a quaking asp back of the cabin.
“I wouldn’t have married Pete on a bet,” she went on, “but he was too dumb to know that, and all the time he nearly drives me nuts askin’ me to marry him if Joe dies.
“At last one night, just to keep him quiet, I said I would, and when he comes into the flat with me the first thing he does is peek into Joe’s bedroom. Joe is asleep. Pete hands me a bottle o’ hooch.
“ ‘Fix me up a drink, Maisie,’ he says.
“I goes into the kitchen to fix him a drink, but I ain’t no more’n got the ginger ale poured when I hears a shot. I drops the bottle and runs into the bedroom. Pete Mongone is layin’ on the floor and Joe is standin’ over him with a gun. I jumps at Joe, but he pushes me away, bends over Pete and takes his crucifix out o’ Pete’s hand. He kisses the crucifix, then kicks Pete in the ribs.
“ ‘You lousy wop!’ he yells. ‘You tried to steal my crucifix so I’d croak, huh!’
“He made another kick at Pete, but I grabbed him, threw his clothes over his pyjamas and we beat it before the cops come. My mother hid us a couple o’ days and borrowed some money for us.
“A girl friend o’ mine in Chicago spends her vacations at the Bluebird department store camp near here, so I knew where this place was. I thought if I got Joe out here maybe his lungs would get better, but—”
Maisie Carrol glanced at the grave before her, then buried her face in her hands and sobbed bitterly. Sheriff McKenzie stood up and lighted the stub of his dead cigar.
“You wrote to your mother a few weeks ago, didn’t you?” he asked gently.
“Yes,” moaned Maisie. “I s’pose the cops got the letter.”
The sheriff nodded, but his blue eyes narrowed.
“When did Joe die?” he said quietly.
“Three days ago,” sobbed Maisie.
“Have a doctor?”
“N-no. He went too quick.”
“Why didn’t you take his body back to Chicago?”
“I... I didn’t have money enough.”
“Why didn’t you call the coroner?”
“I... I don’t know.”
“Bury him yourself?”
“Yes. All alone.”
The sheriff shook his head thoughtfully.
“It’s too bad,” he said. “They didn’t want Joe in Chicago.”
Like a flash Maisie Carrol jumped lip and, gripping the sheriff’s arm, glared at him wildly.
“They didn’t want him!” he cried.
“Pete Mongone didn’t die,” explained Sheriff McKenzie. “He—”
But the cabaret girl did not wait for the sheriff to finish his sentence. She leaped across the newly-made grave and waved her arms toward the pine grove.
“Joe!” she screamed exultantly. “Joe! It’s all O.K.!”
A dry twig crackled in the pine grove, an overhanging bough was brushed aside and a thin youth, clad in shabby gray trousers, a red sweater and brown cap walked into the clearing back of the cabin.
He plodded slowly over the rocky earth, halting every few feet as a paroxysm of coughing racked his slender body, then he stepped over the fresh grave inscribed “Joe Carrol,” and, removing his cap, faced Sheriff McKenzie.
“You Joe Carrol?” asked the sheriff.
“Yes, sir,” replied the boy, coughing and covering his mouth.