The Depot Master Part 25

"I'm afraid it'll take quite a spell," admitted Mr. Phinney.

"Where's your other one, the white one?"

"The white horse," said Simeon slowly, "ain't feelin' just right and I've had to lay him off."

"Humph! that's too bad. How does Sol act about it? He's such a hustler, I should think--"

"Sol," interrupted Sim, "ain't unreasonable. He understands."

He chuckled inwardly as he said it. Captain Sol did understand. Also Mr.

Phinney himself was beginning to understand a little.

The very day on which Williams and his foreman had called on the depot master and been dismissed so unceremoniously, that official paid a short visit to his mover.

"Sim," he said, the twinkle still in his eye, "his Majesty, Williams the Conqueror, was in to see me just now and acted real peevish. He was pretty disrespectful to you, too. Called your outfit 'one horse.' That's a mistake, because you've got two horses at work right now. It seems a shame to make a great man like that lie. Hadn't you better lay off one of them horses?"

"Lay one OFF?" exclaimed Simeon. "What for? Why, we'll be slow enough, as 'tis. With only one horse we wouldn't get through for I don't know how long."

"That's so," murmured the Captain. "I s'pose with one horse you'd hardly reach the middle of the Boulevard by--well, before the tenth of the month. Hey?"

The tenth of the month! The TENTH! Why, it was on the tenth that that Omaha cousin of Olive Edwards was to--Mr. Phinney began to see--to see and to grin, slow but expansive.

"Hm-m-m!" he mused.

"Yes," observed Captain Sol. "That white horse of yours looks sort of ailin' to me, Sim. I think he needs a rest."

And, sure enough, next day the white horse was p.r.o.nounced unfit and taken back to the stable. The depot master's dwelling moved, but that is all one could say truthfully concerning its progress.

At the depot the Captain was quieter than usual. He joked with his a.s.sistant less than had been his custom, and for the omission Issy was duly grateful. Sometimes Captain Sol would sit for minutes without speaking. He seemed to be thinking and to be pondering some grave problem. When his friends, Mr. Wingate, Captain St.i.tt, Hiram Baker, and the rest, dropped in on him he cheered up and was as conversational as ever. After they had gone he relapsed into his former quiet mood.

"He acts sort of blue, to me," declared Issy, speaking from the depths of sensational-novel knowledge. "If he was a younger man I'd say he was most likely in love. Ah, hum! I s'pose bein' in love does get a feller mournful, don't it?"

Issy made this declaration to his mother only. He knew better than to mention sentiment to male acquaintances. The latter were altogether too likely to ask embarra.s.sing questions.

Mr. Wingate and Captain St.i.tt were still in town, although their stay was drawing to a close. One afternoon they entered the station together.

Captain Sol seemed glad to see them.

"Set down, fellers," he ordered. "I swan I'm glad to see you. I ain't fit company for myself these days."

"Ain't Betsy Higgins feedin' you up to the mark?" asked St.i.tt. "Or is house movin' gettin' on your vitals?"

"No," growled the depot master, "grub's all right and so's movin', I cal'late. I'm glad you fellers come in. What's the news to Orham, Barzilla? How's the Old Home House boarders standin' it? Hear from Jonadab regular, do you?"

Mr. Wingate laughed. "Nothin' much," he said. "Jonadab's too busy to write these days. Bein' a sport interferes with letter writing consider'ble."

"Sport!" exclaimed Captain Bailey. "Land of Goshen! Cap'n Jonadab is the last one I'd call a sport."

"That's 'cause you ain't a good judge of human nature, Bailey," chuckled Barzilla. "When ancient plants like Jonadab Wixon DO bloom, they're gay old blossoms, I tell you!"

"What do you mean?" asked the depot master.

"I mean that Jonadab's been givin' me heart disease, that's what; givin'

it to me in a good many diff'rent ways, too. We opened the Old Home House the middle of April this year, because Peter T. Brown thought we might catch some spring trade. We did catch a little, though whether it paid to open up so early's a question. But 'twas June 'fore Jonadab got his disease so awful bad. However, most any time in the last part of May the reg'lar programme of the male boarders was stirrin' him up.

"Take it of a dull day, for instance. Sky overcast and the wind aidgin'

round to the sou'east, so's you couldn't tell whether 'twould rain or fair off; too cold to go off to the ledge cod fis.h.i.+n' and too hot for billiards or bowlin'; a bunch of the younger women folks at one end of the piazza playin' bridge; half a dozen men, includin' me and Cap'n Jonadab, smokin' and tryin' to keep awake at t'other end; amids.h.i.+ps a gang of females--all 'fresh air fiends'--and mainly widows or discards in the matrimony deal, doin' fancywork and gossip. That would be about the usual layout.

"Conversation got to you in homeopath doses, somethin' like this:

"'Did you say "Spades"? WELL! if I'd known you were going to make us lose our deal like that, I'd never have bridged it--not with THIS hand.'

"'Oh, Miss Gabble, have you heard what people are sayin' about--' The rest of it whispers.

"'A--oo--OW! By George, Bill! this is dead enough, isn't it? Shall we match for the cigars or are you too lazy?'

"Then, from away off in the stillness would come a drawn-out 'Honk!

honk!' like a wild goose with the asthma, and pretty soon up the road would come sailin' a big red automobile, loaded to the guards with goggles and grandeur, and whiz past the hotel in a hurricane of dust and smell. Then all hands would set up and look interested, and Bill would wink acrost at his chum and drawl:

"'That's the way to get over the country! Why, a horse isn't one--two--three with that! Cap'n Wixon, I'm surprised that a sportin'

man like you hasn't bought one of those things long afore this.'

"For the next twenty minutes there wouldn't be any dullness. Jonadab would take care of that. He'd have the floor and be givin' his opinions of autos and them that owned and run 'em. And between the drops of his language shower you'd see them boarders nudgin' each other and rockin'

back and forth contented and joyful.

"It always worked. No matter what time of day or night, all you had to say was 'auto' and Cap'n Jonadab would sail up out of his chair like one of them hot-air balloons the youngsters nowadays have on Fourth of July.

And he wouldn't come down till he was empty of remarks, nuther. You never see a man get so red faced and eloquent.

"It wa'n't because he couldn't afford one himself. I know that's the usual reason for them kind of ascensions, but 'twa'n't his. No, sir!

the summer hotel business has put a considerable number of dollars in Jonadab's hands, and the said hands are like a patent rat trap, a mighty sight easier to get into than out of. He could have bought three automobiles if he'd wanted to, but he didn't want to. And the reason he didn't was named Tobias Loveland and lived over to Orham."

"I know Tobias," interrupted Captain Bailey St.i.tt.

"Course you do," continued Barzilla. "So does Sol, I guess. Well, anyhow, Tobias and Cap'n Jonadab never did hitch. When they was boys together at school they was always rowin' and fightin', and when they grew up to be thirty and courted the same girl--ten years younger than either of 'em, she was--twa'n't much better. Neither of 'em got her, as a matter of fact; she married a tin peddler named Ba.s.sett over to Hyannis. But both cal'lated they would have won if t'other hadn't been in the race, and consequently they loved each other with a love that pa.s.sed understandin'. Tobias had got well to do in the cranberry-raisin'

line and drove a fast horse. Jonadab, durin' the last prosperous year or two, had bought what he thought was some horse, likewise. They met on the road one day last spring and trotted alongside one another for a mile. At the end of that mile Jonadab's craft's jib boom was just astern of Tobias's rudder. Inside of that week the Cap'n had swapped his horse for one with a two-thirty record, and the next time they met Tobias was left with a beautiful, but dusty, view of Jonadab's back hair. So HE bought a new horse. And that was the beginnin'.

"It went along that way for twelve months. Fust one feller's nag would come home freighted with perspiration and glory, and then t'other's. One week Jonadab would be so bloated with horse pride that he couldn't find room for his vittles, and the next he'd be out in the stable growlin'

'cause it cost so much for hay to stuff an old hide rack that wa'n't fit to put in a museum. At last it got so that neither one could find a better horse on the Cape, and the two they had was practically an even match. I begun to have hopes that the foolishness was over. And then the tin peddler's widow drifts in to upset the whole calabash.

"She made port at Orham fust, this Henrietta Ba.s.sett did, and the style she slung killed every female Goliath in the Orham sewin' circle dead.

Seems her husband that was had been an inventor, as a sort of side line to peddlin' tinware, and all to once he invented somethin' that worked.

He made money--n.o.body knew how much, though all hands had a guess--and pretty soon afterwards he made a will and Henrietta a widow. She'd been livin' in New York, so she said, and had come back to revisit the scenes of her childhood. She was a mighty well-preserved woman--artificial preservatives, I cal'late, like some kinds of tomatter ketchup--and her comin' stirred Orham way down to the burnt places on the bottom of the kettle."

"I guess I remember HER, too," put in Captain Bailey.

"Say!" queried Mr. Wingate snappishly, "do you want to tell about her?

If you do, why--"

"Belay, both of you!" ordered the depot master. "Heave ahead, Barzilla."