From Warrior, the Untamed, The Story of an Imaginative Press Agent, by Will Irwin, Illustrations by F. R.Gruger, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1909; pp. 21-29.
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He struck straight down the Zion road. It was a fine, peaceful Sunday afternoon — an automobile every hundred feet, traps and top buggies sprinkled between, lollygagging couples sparking along the sidewalks, the Dutch consuming beer on the piazzas. The first vehicle that 22 met him after he cleared the hill was a top buggy. The horse gave three snorts and a jump and brought up with his forefeet in an automobile which pulled up suddenly just behind. The yap who was driving out his best girl went straight over the dashboard into the tonneau, thus forcing on our best families a person who had never been properly introduced. The Untamed, finding his way blocked, took a running jump, cleared the mix-up, and brought up in front of a piazza that was just beery with the Dutch. The Dutch went under the tables as if Jesse James and guns had appeared in the door — all but one little girl. Forgotten and neglected, she sat on top of a table and looked over the railing at Warrior, who ’d stopped to plan his future course, and said, “Nice doggie!” The Untamed considered this 23 proposition. Children had always been kind to him. They ’d poked him uneatable peanuts through the bars of the cage and taught him to like peppermints, and I guess he figured that he could exempt this one from the temporary general sour he had on humanity.
But while he ’s sidling up to the little girl, presenting his ear to be scratched, a waiter pokes his head out of an upstairs window and begins to endanger the surrounding houses with a .22 revolver. If there was one thing more than another that made Warrior, the Untamed, nervous, it was the sound of a gun. Away back in his cub days they ’d tried to train him, and given him up, he was so good-natured and stupid. He learned then that whenever he got mixed up in his mind, one of those things was liable to go off in his face. 24 Warrior swoops around with one last, reproachful look at the little girl, who is just being hauled under the table by her aunt, and streaks it, and loses himself in the woods.
According to the newspapers Warrior, the Untamed, spent that night in twelve different places, scattered over an area of fifty square miles. I don’t know which of them it was, if it was any of them; but when he made his really authenticated appearance he seemed to be agitated by twin yearnings — a desire for human sympathy, and a burning necessity for beef gruel.
Sin-Killer Gilbert, the shouting revivalist from Georgia, was starting a week of services in the First African Church at Waremouth. All the dark population from Cape Cod and environs was present. Sin-Killer had them going 25 fine; the shouts and songs floated out to the bushes where Warrior, hungry and misunderstood, was planning his nightly foray for sympathy and beef gruel. If I wanted to touch up this story I ’d stop here to describe the ancestral memories of primeval tropic jungles which those rich African voices woke in Warrior’s bosom. Anyhow, he did come out of the bushes, as his track showed, and investigate the First African Church.
Sin-Killer Gilbert was exhorting on the scenery of hell. He had told about hell fires that burn clear through you, and hell snakes that crawl over your bare, black body, and was touching in passing on hell beasts with poison fangs that bite your bones. And right in the middle of his climax, when he had both hands raised up in the air ready to swoop them down to the platform, he 26 stopped and fixed his eyes and turned a pale green. Then he sank to the floor and crawled under the pulpit, howling, “Not yet, Marse Gabriel; not yet!”
The congregation followed his eyes. Warrior was peeking into the front window. When he saw that he was attracting human attention, he opened his mouth for a glad roar.
They did n’t leave a window-pane or a window-sash in the sides or rear of the First African Church. It rained coons. One of the bucks had brought along his gun for social purposes. He cut into the bushes and turned loose at the poor old Untamed, who was slinking away a lot hurt at the loathing he inspired. The shooting finished his disgust; he crawled back to the woods and lost himself in loneliness and hunger.
27The next morning we heard from Warrior at Satuit. That ’s a nice, quiet little town on the South Shore, half native granger, half summer visitor. They call it the grandest place for a rest between Provincetown and Boston. Perhaps that ’s why Warrior, the Untamed, shivering on the verge of an emotional breakdown, picked out Satuit. He seemed to linger there quite a while. First he visited the beach at high tide. All the summer folks were out; the children were paddling about the surf, digging sand, or playing with the dogs; the boys were frolicking on the raft; the women were reading under sun umbrellas. Warrior walked out on to the cliff and surveyed the scene. It called up dear recollections, I guess, of the beach at Paradise Park which he could n’t seem to find. When Satuit Beach first perceives 28 the Untamed, he ’s coming down the cliff road in quick, glad leaps.
People who had loathed the water all their lives began to yearn for it. People who swam six strokes became Danielses and Annette Kellermans. People who dassen ’t go out above their heads struck straight for the coast of Spain. The whole of Satuit Beach dove together as though the starting gun had just gone off. And the Untamed, staring across the water and making quick side-steps to avoid wetting his feet, perceived that he was still a pariah. To express his grief and disappointment he roared a loud roar and trotted away.
The road from the beach runs to Satuit Harbour, the shopping district of that thriving little metropolis. Warrior, who had slowed down to a walk, emerged with considerable dignity on to the street. 29 His appearance made its customary hit. Horses pulled up their hitching-posts and went away from that place. Old ladies climbed fences, old gentlemen went up telegraph poles like cats. Doors flew shut, and windows flew open. Warrior, the Untamed, was monarch of untrodden wastes again.
“Old gentlemen went up telegraph poles like cats”