When Egypt Went Broke Part 9

"Mr. Britt, that's a matter for the vote of the directors--and I'll wait to hear from them."

Vaniman whirled from Britt, for the impulse was in him to smash his doubled fist into that hateful visage; his palm still itched; the open-handed buffet had not satisfied the tingling nerves of that hand.

Usial Britt had not hurried about raising himself from his crouching position. He was standing with his ap.r.o.n over his head and faced the citizens. He was smiling--an irradiating, genial, triumphant sort of smile! One might readily have taken him for the victor in a contest!

Spokesman Jones gulped. "We came--we was intending--but this hoop-te-doo--"

Usial beamed blandly and helped out Mr. Jones's efforts to express his intentions. "Yes, Brother Jones, it was quite a shower while it lasted.

What were you intending to do?"

"Ask you to take the nomination for the legislature."

The crowd indorsed the request with _viva-voce_ enthusiasm.

"I certainly will. I am pleased and proud," declared Usial.

Through the circle of men came Prophet Elias, his robe trailing on his heels. He stood beside Usial and faced the bystanders. He proclaimed, "'Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through Him that loved us.'"

Somebody handed to Mr. Jones his whip and he inspected it carefully. "Of course, there's more than one way of fighting a man--and I have my own notions--but maybe I'm wrong."

"Eli has observed many a dog-fight," Squire Hexter remarked; "and, so far as he sees, the attacking dog doesn't get much out of the fracas except a ripped ear and a raw reputation in the neighborhood." He marched to Vaniman, took that perturbed young man by the arm, and said that Xoa would be waiting supper.

CHAPTER VII

SQUARED OFF AND ALL SET

As Squire Hexter and Vaniman walked on together the notary deferred comment on the recent happenings, as if he hoped that the cas.h.i.+er would open up on the topic. But Frank was grimly silent.

Therefore the Squire broke the ice. "What kind of a partner does Tasp Britt make in a polka, son? I saw you and him going at it pretty briskly."

"I stopped him from making a fool of himself."

"Quite a contract, boy! Quite a contract! And when you got to the matter of his purple whiskers and his lamp-mat hair--"

"I said nothing to Mr. Britt on such a ridiculous topic--certainly not, sir!"

"And yet you brag that you have stopped him from making a fool of himself," purred the Squire. "Tut! Tut! He's worse than ever. I heard him tell you that you're discharged from the bank."

"Yes, I heard him, too!"

"I didn't catch what you answered back."

"I told him I should ask the directors to decide that matter."

"Quite right! You're sure of one vote for your side--that's mine! And I think that when President Britt considers that he has no other charge against you except that you took away a horsewhip that he was using not wisely but too well--"

"I struck him across the mouth."

"Oh, I missed that," said the Squire, regretfully. "Why the pat?"

"I could not express my feelings in any other way. As to what those feelings were and why he stirred them, I'll have to ask you to excuse me, Squire Hexter. If I were going to stay in the bank I would explain the matter to you and to the directors. But I'm going to resign. Under these conditions, n.o.body has the right to tear the heart out of me and stick it up for a topic of conversation."

The Squire glanced sideways at the convulsed face of the cas.h.i.+er and opened his eyes wide; but he promptly hid his wonderment and checked an exclamation that sounded like a question. "I reckon all of us better wait till morning, son--Tasper and you and I and all the rest." He looked up at the bright stars in a hard sky. "A snappy night like this will cool things off considerable."

"I'll wait till morning, sir! Then I propose to resign," Frank insisted.

"Don't say anything like that in front of Xoa," pleaded Squire Hexter.

"I don't ever want to see again on her face the look she wore when she followed our own Frank to the cemetery; now that she has sort of adopted you, boy, I'm afraid she'll have the same look if she had to follow you to Ike Jones's stage."

The supper was waiting, as the Squire had predicted; but he took no chances on sitting at table at once and having her keen woman's eyes survey Vaniman's somber face; he feared that her solicitude would open up a dangerous topic.

"Leave your biscuits in for a few minutes, Mother," the Squire urged.

"Let's have some literature for an appetizer."

So he sat down and read the brotherly tribute in the new issue of _The Hornet_, and Xoa's eyes glistened behind her spectacles, though she decorously deplored the heat of the sting dealt by Usial. Frank, watching her efforts to hide mirth and display womanly concern at this distressing affair between brothers, forgot some of his own troubles in his amus.e.m.e.nt. Therefore the Squire's tactics were successful, and the talk at the supper table over the hot biscuits and the cold chicken and the damson preserves was concerned merely with the characters of the brothers Britt. Squire Hexter did mention, casually, that Frank had succeeded in inducing Tasper to stop whipping Usial. Xoa reached and patted the young man's arm and blessed him with her eyes.

Frank, as usual, helped Xoa to clear away the supper things. Early in his stay he had been obliged to beg for permission to do it, and she had consented at last when he pleaded that it made him feel less like a boarder in the Hexter home.

While she finished her work in the kitchen Vaniman sat with the Squire in front of the fireplace and smoked his pipe, but not with his customary comfort; the tobacco seemed to be as bitter as his ponderings; he was trying to stiffen his resolution to go away from Egypt.

Squire Hexter chatted. It was hard to keep off the Britt affair, but the notary tactfully kept away from the sore center of it.

"It has been going on a long time--the trouble between 'em, son. For two men who look alike outside, they're about as different inside as any two I've ever known. Tasper has been all for grab! He grabbed away Usial's share of the home place and then he grabbed Mehitable Dole while she was keeping company with Usial. I suppose Hittie reckoned there was no choice in outside looks, but saw considerable inducement in the home place. Plenty of other women for Usial! Yes! But I can't help thinking that I might be keeping bach hall in my law office if I hadn't got hold of Xoa in my young days. So there's Usial! Right in his rut because he's the kind that stays in a rut. Pegs shoes days and reads books nights. No telling how the legislature may develop him. Glad he's going."

The Squire rapped out his pipe ashes against an andiron. His posture gave him an opportunity to say what he said next without meeting Vaniman's gaze. "Vona Harnden was a mighty smart girl when she was teaching school. I was superintendent and had a chance to know. Does she take hold well in the bank?"

Vaniman had hard work to make his affirmative sound casual.

"Have you met Joe, her father, since you've been in town?"

"No, sir."

"Not surprising, and no great loss. Joe is on the jump a lot--geniusing around the country. Joe's a real genius."

The young man looked straight into the fire and returned no comment. He knew well the dry quality of Hexter's satirical humor and perceived that the notary was indulging in that humor.

"Yes, Joe Harnden is quite an operator, son. Jumps, as I have said. A good optimist. Jumps up so high every day that he can see over all the bothersome hills into the Promised Land of Plenty. Only trouble is that Joe's jumping apparatus is so geared that he only jumps straight up and lands back in the same place. Now, if only he could jump ahead."

Xoa had come in from the kitchen and was setting out a small table on which the pachisi board was ready for the evening's regular recreation.

She broke in with protest. "Amos, you shouldn't make fun of the neighbors!"

"I'm complimenting Joe Harnden," the Squire went on, with serenity. "I'm saying that when he uses that inventive genius of his on his own jumping gear he'll leap ahead and make good. For instance, son, here's an example. Joe invented an anti-stagger shoe--a star-shaped shoe--to be let out at saloons and city clubs like they lend umbrellas for a fee--and then the reformers went and pa.s.sed that prohibition law. Always a little behind with a grand notion--that's the trouble with Joe!"

"Amos, you're making up that yarn about a shoe!" declared Xoa.

"Well, if it wasn't an anti-stagger shoe, it was--oh--something,"

insisted the Squire. "At any rate, Joe was in my office to-day. He's home again. He's all cheered up. He is taking town gossip for face value." The notary looked away from Vaniman and gave his wife an ingenuous glance. "Of course, I don't need to remind you, Xoa, speaking of gossip, that the folks will have it that Tasp Britt has put on that war paint so as to go on the trail of a Number Two. And Joe says that, in picking Vona, Britt has picked right. Joe's a genius in inventing.