The Brown Mouse Part 24

"I appreciate this, Clumb," said Jim, "but I don't believe you can do it."

"Well, think of it," said Columbus. "And don't do anything till you talk with me and a few of the rest of the boys."

"Think of it" again!

A fine home-coming it was for Jim, with the colonel waiting at the station with a double sleigh, and the chance to ride into the snowy country in the same seat with Jennie--a chance which was blighted by the colonel's placing of Jennie, Bettina and Nils Hansen in the broad rear seat, and Jim in front with himself. A fine ride, just the same, over fine roads, and past fine farmsteads snuggled into their rectangular wrappages of trees set out in the old pioneer days. The colonel would not allow him to get out and walk when he could really have reached home more quickly by doing so; no, he set the Hansens down at their door, took Jennie home, and then drove the lightened sleigh merrily to the humble cabin of the rather excited young schoolmaster.

"Did you make any deal with those people down in the western part of the state?" asked the colonel. "Jennie wrote me that you've got an offer."

"No," said Jim, and he told the colonel about the proposal of Mr.

Hofmyer.

"Well," said the colonel, "in my capacity of wild-eyed reformer, I've made up my mind that the first four miles in the trip is to make the rural teacher's job a bigger job. It's got to be a man's size, woman's size job, or we can't get real men and real women to stay in the work."

"I think that's a statesmanlike formulation of it," said Jim.

"Well," said the colonel, "don't turn down the Pottawatomie County job until we have a chance to see what we can do. I'll get some kind of a meeting together, and what I want you to do is to use this offer as a club over this helpless school district. What we need is to be held up. Do the Jesse James act, Jim!"

"I can't, Colonel!"

"Yes, you can, too. Will you try it?"

"I want to treat everybody fairly," said Jim, "including Mr. Hofmyer. I don't know what to do, hardly."

"Well, I'll get the meeting together," said the colonel, "and in the meantime, think of what I've said."

Another thing to think of! Jim rushed into the house and surprised his mother, who had expected him to arrive after a slow walk from town through the snow. Jim caught her in his arms, from which she was released a moment later, quite fl.u.s.tered and blus.h.i.+ng.

"Why, James," said she, "you seem excited. What's happened?"

"Nothing, mother," he replied, "except that I believe there's just a possibility of my being a success in the world!"

"My boy, my boy!" said she, laying her hand on his arm, "if you were to die to-night, you'd die the greatest success any boy ever was--if your mother is any judge."

Jim kissed her, and went up to his attic to change his clothes. Inside the waistcoat was a worn envelope, which he carefully opened, and took from it a letter much creased from many foldings. It was the old letter from Jennie, written when the comical mistake had been made of making him the teacher of the Woodruff school. It still contained her rather fussy cautions about being "too original," and the sage statement that "the wheel runs easiest in the beaten track." It was written before the vexation and trouble he had caused her; but he did not read the advice, nor think of the coolness which had come between them--he read only the sentence in which Jennie had told of her father's interest in Jim's success, ending with the underscored words, "_I'm for you, too._"

"I wonder," said Jim, as he went out to do the evening's tasks, "I wonder if she _is_ for me!"

CHAPTER XXI

A SCHOOL DISTRICT HELD UP

Young McGeehee Simms was loitering along the snowy way to the schoolhouse bearing a brightly scoured tin pail two-thirds full of water. He had been allowed to act as Water Superintendent of the Woodruff School as a reward of merit--said merit being an essay on which he received credit in both language and geography on "Harvesting Wheat in the Tennessee Mountains."

This had been of vast interest to the school in view of the fact that the Simmses were the only pupils in the school who had ever seen in use that supposedly-obsolete harvesting implement, the cradle. Buddy's essay had been pa.s.sed over to the cla.s.s in United States history as the evidence of an eye-witness concerning farming conditions in our grandfathers' times.

The surnameless Pete, Colonel Woodruff's hired man, halted Buddy at the door.

"Mr. Simms, I believe?" he said.

"I reckon you must be lookin' for my brother, Raymond, suh," said Buddy.

"I am a-lookin'," said Pete impressively, "for Mr. McGeehee Simms."

"That's me," said Buddy; "but I hain't been doin' nothin' wrong, suh!"

"I have a message here," said Pete, "for Professor James E. Irwin. He's what-ho within, there, ain't he?"

"He's inside, I reckon," said Buddy.

"Then will you be so kind and condescendin' as to stoop so low as to jump so high as to give him this letter?" asked Pete.

Buddy took the letter and was considering of his reply to this remarkable speech, when Pete, gravely saluting, pa.s.sed on, rather congratulating himself on having staged a very good burlesque of the dignified manners of those queer mountaineers, the Simmses.

"Please come to the meeting to-night," ran the colonel's note to Jim; "and when you come, come prepared to hold the district up. If we can't meet the Pottawatomie County standard of wages, we ought to lose you. Everybody in the district will be there. Come late, so you won't hear yourself talked about--I should recommend nine-thirty and war-paint."

It was a crisis, no doubt of that; and the responsibility of the situation rather sickened Jim of the task of teaching. How could he impose conditions on the whole school district? How could the colonel expect such a thing of him? And how could any one look for anything but scorn for the upstart field-hand from these men who had for so many years made him the b.u.t.t of their good-natured but none the less contemptuous ridicule? Who was he, anyway, to lay down rules for these substantial and successful men--he who had been for all the years of his life at their command, subservient to their demands for labor--their underling? Only one thing kept him from dodging the whole issue and remaining at home--the colonel's matter-of-fact a.s.sumption that Jim had become master of the situation. How could he flee, when this old soldier was fighting so valiantly for him in the trenches? So Jim went to the meeting.

The season was nearing spring, and it was a mild thawy night. The windows of the schoolhouse were filled with heads, evidencing the presence of a crowd of almost unprecedented size, and the sashes had been thrown up for ventilation and coolness. As Jim climbed the back fence of the school-yard, he heard a burst of applause, from which he judged that some speaker had just finished his remarks. There was silence when he came alongside the window at the right of the chairman's desk, a silence broken by the voice of Old Man Simms, saying "Mistah Chairman!"

"The chair," said the voice of Ezra Bronson, "recognizes Mr. Simms."

Jim halted in indecision. He was not expected while the debate was in progress, and therefore regarded himself at this time as somewhat _de trop_. There is no rule of manners or morals, however, forbidding eavesdropping during the proceedings of a public meeting--and anyhow, he felt rather s.h.i.+veringly curious about these deliberations. Therefore he listened to the first and last public speech of Old Man Simms.

"Ah ain't no speaker," said Old Man Simms, "but Ah cain't set here and be quiet an' go home an' face my ole woman an' my boys an' gyuhls withouten sayin' a word fo' the best friend any family evah had, Mr. Jim Irwin."

(Applause.) "Ah owe it to him that Ah've got the right to speak in this meetin' at all. Gentlemen, we-all owe everything to Mr. Jim Irwin! Maybe Ah'll be thought forrard to speak hyah, bein' as Ah ain't no learnin' an'

some may think Ah don't pay no taxes; but it will be overlooked, I reckon, seein' as how we've took the Blanchard farm, a hundred an' sixty acres, for five yeahs, an' move in a week from Sat'day. We pay taxes in our rent, Ah reckon, an' howsomever that may be, Ah've come to feel that you-all won't think hard of me if Ah speak what we-uns feel so strong about Mr.

Jim Irwin?"

Old Man Simms finished this exordium with the rising inflection, which denoted a direct question as to his status in the meeting. "Go on!"

"You've got as good a right as any one!" "You're all right, old man!" Such exclamations as these came to Jim's ears with scarcely less gratefulness than to those of Old Man Simms--who stammered and went on.

"Ah thank you-all kindly. Gentlemen an' ladies, when Mr. Jim Irwin found us, we was scandalous pore, an' we was wuss'n pore--we was low-down."

(Cries of "No--No!") "Yes, we was, becuz what's respectable in the mountings is one thing, whar all the folks is pore, but when a man gets in a new place, he's got to lift himse'f up to what folks does where he's come to, or he'll fall to the bottom of what there is in that there community--an' maybe he'll make a place fer himse'f lower'n anybody else.

In the mountings we was good people, becuz we done the best we could an'

the best any one done; but hyah, we was low-down people becuz we hated the people that had mo' learnin', mo' land, mo' money, an' mo' friends than what we had. My little gyuhls wasn't respectable in their clothes. My childern was igernant, an' triflin', but I was the most triflin' of all.

Ah'll leave it to Colonel Woodruff if I was good fer a plug of terbacker, or a bakin' of flour at any sto' in the county. Was I, Colonel? Wasn't I perfectly wuthless an' triflin'?"

There was a ripple of laughter, in the midst of which the colonel's voice was heard saying, "I guess you were, Mr. Simms, I guess you were, but----"

"Thankee," said Old Man Simms, as if the colonel had given a really valuable testimonial to his character. "I sho' was! Thankee kindly!

An'now, what am I good fer? Cain't I get anything I want at the stores?

Cain't I git a little money at the bank, if I got to have it?"

"You're just as good as any man in the district," said the colonel. "You don't ask for more than you can pay, and you can get all you ask."