



Produced by Al Haines









[Frontispiece: "An' the bridal couple 'd be holdin' hands an' gazin'
over the spanker-boom at the full moon." [Page 242.]]




RUNNING FREE

BY

JAMES B. CONNOLLY



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

NEW YORK ::::::::::::::::::::: 1917




  COPYRIGHT, 1913, 1915, 1917, BY
  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

  Published September, 1917

  COPYRIGHT, 1912, 1913, 1917, BY P. F. COLLIER & SON, INCORPORATED
  COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY




CONTENTS

The Strategists

The Weeping Annie

The Bull-Fight

A Bale of Blankets

Breath o' Dawn

Peter Stops Ashore

The Sea-Birds

The Medicine Ship

One Wireless Night

Dan Magee: White Hope




ILLUSTRATIONS

"An' the bridal couple'd be holdin' hands an' gazin' over the
spanker-boom at the full moon" Frontispiece

"All stand clear of the main entrance"

"It was drive, drive, drive, from midnight to daylight"

It took till the daylight was all but gone before I knocked him down
for the last time

"You doubted my courage, maybe?" I asked

"'Quiscanto vascamo mirajjar,' which is Yunzano for 'I am satisfied, I
can now die happy'"




The Strategists

I arrived in Santacruz in the early evening, and as I stepped out of
the carriage with the children the majordomo came rushing out from
under the hotel portales and said: "Meesus Trench, is it?  Your suite
awaits, madam.  The Lieutenant Trench from the American warship has
ordered, madam."

There was a girl, not too young, sitting over at a small table, and at
the name Trench, pronounced in the round voice of the majordomo,
she--well, she was sitting by herself, smoking a cigarette, and I did
not know why she should smile and look at me--in just that way, I mean.
But I can muster some poise of manner myself when I choose--I looked at
her.  And she looked me over and smiled again.  And I did not like that
smile.  It was as if--as Ned would say--she had something on me.

She and I were to be enemies--already I saw that.  She was making smoke
rings, and she never hurried the making of a single one of them as she
looked at me; nor did I hurry a particle the ushering of the two
children and the maid into the hotel.  But I did ask, after I had
greeted Nan and her mother inside: "Auntie--or you, Nan--who is the
oleander blossom smoking the cigarette out under the portales?"

It spoke volumes to me that Nan and her mother, without looking, at
once knew whom I meant.  She was the Carmen Whiffle of whom nearly
every other American woman waiting to be taken home on the next
transport had been whispering--and not always whispering--for weeks in
Santacruz.

Nan, of course, had a good word for her.  Is there a living creature on
earth she wouldn't?  "I think she is wonderfully good-looking," said
Nan.

"No woman with a jaw like that," said Nan's mother, "can be
good-looking.  And she sat at the piano there early this evening and
raved over the 'Melody in F'; but when she tried to play it, it was
with fingers of wood.  What she really did play with spirit,
Nettie--when she thought there were none of us American women around to
hear her--was: 'I Want What I Want When I Want _It_.'"

Auntie went on to tell then how this creature was a divorcee who had
married an oil millionaire and within six months got her second divorce
and a half-million alimony out of him.  And as a baby she was
christened--not Carmen, but Hannah!  "Now, what's the psychology,
Nettie," said auntie, "of a woman who changes her name from Hannah to
Carmen?  She wants what she wants when she wants it--and she'll come
pretty near getting it, Nettie.  If I had a husband within a thousand
miles of her, I'd lock him up."

You may understand from the foregoing that Mrs. Wedner--Nan's
mother--is a woman of convictions; and so she is.  The Lady with the
Wallop