The Depot Master Part 44

But Captain St.i.tt was ready with a denial. He claimed that the prophecy was NOT fulfilled and therefore all fortune telling was fraudulent.

Barzilla retorted hotly, and the argument began again. The two were shouting at each other. Captain Sol stood it for a while and then commanded silence.

"Stop your yellin'!" he ordered. "What ails you fellers? Think you can prove it better by screechin'? They can hear you half a mile. There's Cornelius Rowe standin' gawpin' on the other side of the street this minute. He thinks there's a fire or a riot, one or t'other. Let's change the subject. See here, Bailey, didn't you start to tell us somethin'

last time you was in here about your ridin' in an automobile?"

"I started to--yes. But n.o.body'd listen. I rode in one and I sailed in one. You see--"

"I'm goin' outdoor," declared Barzilla.

"No, you're not. Bailey listened to you. Now you do as much for him. I heard a little somethin' about the affair at the time it happened and I'd like to hear the rest of it. How was it, Bailey?"

Captain St.i.tt knocked the ashes from his pipe.

"Well," he began, "I didn't know the critter was weak in his top riggin'

or I wouldn't have gone with him in the fust place. And he wa'n't real loony, nuther. 'Twas only when he got aboard that--that unG.o.dly, kerosene-smellin', tootin', buzzin', Old Harry's gocart of his that the craziness begun to show. There's so many of them weak-minded city folks from the Ocean House comes perusin' 'round summers, nowadays, that I cal'lated he was just an average specimen, and never examined him close."

"Are all the Ocean House boarders weak-minded nowadays?" asked the depot master.

Mr. Wingate answered the question.

"My land!" he snapped; "would they board at the Ocean House if they WA'N'T weak-minded?"

Captain Bailey did not deign to reply to this jibe. He continued calmly:

"This feller wa'n't an Ocean Houser, though. He was young Stumpton's automobile skipper-shover, or shofer, or somethin' they called him. He answered to the hail of Billings, and his home port was the Stumpton ranch, 'way out in Montana. He'd been here in Orham only a couple of weeks, havin' come plumb across the United States to fetch his boss the new automobile. You see, 'twas early October. The Stumptons had left their summer place on the Cliff Road, and was on their way South for the winter. Young Stumpton was up to Boston, but he was comin' back in a couple of days, and then him and the shover was goin' automobilin' to Florida. To Florida, mind you! In that thing! If it was me I'd buy my ticket to Tophet direct and save time and money.

"Well, anyhow, this critter Billings, he ain't never smelt salt water afore, and he don't like the smell. He makes proclamations that Orham is nothin' but sand, slush, and soft drinks. He won't sail, he can't swim, he won't fish; but he's hankerin' to shoot somethin', havin' been brought up in a place where if you don't shoot some of the neighbors every day or so folks think you're stuck up and dissociable. Then somebody tells him it's the duckin' season down to Setuckit P'int, and he says he'll spend his day off, while the boss is away, ma.s.sycreein'

the coots there. This same somebody whispers that I know so much about ducks that I quack when I talk, and he comes cruisin' over in the buzz cart to hire me for guide. And--would you b'lieve it?--it turns out that he's cal'latin' to make his duckin' v'yage in that very cart. I was for makin' the trip in a boat, like a sensible man, but he wouldn't hear of it.

"'Land of love!' says I. 'Go to Setuckit in a automobile?'

"'Why not?' he says. 'The biscuit shooter up at the hotel tells me there's a smart chance of folks goes there a-horseback. And where a hoss can travel I reckon the old gal here'--slappin' the thwart of the auto alongside of him--'can go, too!'

"'But there's the Cut-through,' says I.

"''Tain't nothin' but a creek when the freshet's over, they tell me,'

says he. 'And me and the boss have forded four foot of river in this very machine.'

"By the 'freshet' bein' over I judged he meant the tide bein' out. And the Cut-through ain't but a little trickle then, though it's a quarter mile wide and deep enough to float a schooner at high water. It's the strip of channel that makes Setuckit Beach an island, you know. The gov'ment has had engineers down dredgin' of it out, and pretty soon fish boats'll be able to save the twenty-mile sail around the P'int and into Orham Harbor at all hours.

"Well, to make a long story short, I agreed to let him cart me to Setuckit P'int in that everlastin' gas carryall. We was to start at four o'clock in the afternoon, 'cause the tide at the Cut-through would be dead low at half-past four. We'd stay overnight at my shanty at the P'int, get up airly, shoot all day, and come back the next afternoon.

"At four prompt he was on hand, ready for me. I loaded in the guns and grub and one thing or 'nother, and then 'twas time for me to get aboard myself.

"'You'll set in the tonneau,' says he, indicatin' the upholstered after c.o.c.kpit of the concern. I opened up the s.h.i.+ny hatch, under orders from him, and climbed in among the upholstery. 'Twas soft as a feather bed.

"'Jerushy!' says I, lollin' back luxurious. This is fine, ain't it?'

"'Cost seventy-five hundred to build,' he says casual. 'Made to order for the boss. Lightest car of her speed ever turned out.'

"'Go 'way! How you talk! Seventy-five hundred what? Not dollars?'

"'Sure,' he says. Then he turns round--he was in the bow, hangin' on to the steerin' wheel--and looks me over, kind of interested, but superior.

'Say,' he says, 'I've been hearin' things about you. You're a hero, ain't you?'

"Durn them Orham gabblers! Ever sence I hauled that crew of seasick summer boarders out of the drink a couple of years ago and the gov'ment gave me a medal, the minister and some more of his gang have painted out the name I was launched under and had me entered on the s.h.i.+ppin' list as 'The Hero.' I've licked two or three for callin' me that, but I can't lick a parson, and he was the one that told Billings.

"'Oh, I don't know!' I answers pretty sharp. 'Get her under way, why don't you?'

"All he done was look me over some more and grin.

"'A hero! A real live gov'ment-branded hero!' he says. 'Ain't scared of nothin', I reckon--hey?'

"I never made no answer. There's some things that's too fresh to eat without salt, and I didn't have a pickle tub handy.

"'Hum!' he says again, reverend-like. 'A sure hero; scared of nothin'!

Never rode in an auto afore, did you?'

"'No,' says I, peppery; 'and I don't see no present symptom of ridin' in one now. Cast off, won't you?'

"He cast off. That is to say, he hauled a nickel-plated marlinespike thing toward him, shoved another one away from him, took a twist on the steerin' wheel, the gocart coughed like a horse with the heaves, started up some sort of buzz-planer underneath, and then we begun to move.

"From the time we left my shanty at South Orham till we pa.s.sed the pines at Herrin' Neck I laid back in that stuffed c.o.c.kpit, feelin' as grand and tainted as old John D. himself. The automobile rolled along smooth but swift, and it seemed to me I had never known what easy trav'lin' was afore. As we rounded the bend by the pines and opened up the twelve-mile narrow white stretch of Setuckit Beach ahead of us, with the ocean on one side and the bay on t'other, I looked at my watch. We'd come that fur in thirteen minutes.

"'Land sakes!' I says. 'This is what I call movin' right along!'

"He turned round and sized me up again, like he was surprised.

"'Movin'?' says he. 'Movin'? Why, pard, we've been settin' down to rest!

Out our way, if a lynchin' party didn't move faster than we've done so fur, the center of attraction would die on the road of old age. Now, my heroic college chum,' he goes on, callin' me out of my name, as usual, 'will you be so condescendin' as to indicate how we hit the trail?'

"'Hit--hit which? Don't hit nothin', for goodness' sake! Goin' the way we be, it would--'

"'Which way do we go?'

"'Right straight ahead. Keep on the ocean side, 'cause there's more hard sand there, and--hold on! Don't do that! Stop it, I tell you!'

"Them was the last rememberable words said by me durin' the next quarter of an hour. That shover man let out a hair-raisin' yell, hauled the nickel marlinespike over in its rack, and squeezed a rubber bag that was spliced to the steerin' wheel. There was a half dozen toots or howls or honks from under our bows somewheres, and then that automobile hopped off the ground and commenced to fly. The fust hop landed me on my knees in the c.o.c.kpit, and there I stayed. 'Twas the most fittin' position fur my frame of mind and chimed in fust-rate with the general religious drift of my thoughts.

"The Cut-through is two mile or more from Herrin' Neck. 'Cordin' to my count we hit terra cotta just three times in them two miles. The fust hit knocked my hat off. The second one chucked me up so high I looked back for the hat, and though we was a half mile away from it, it hadn't had time to git to the ground. And all the while the horn was a-honkin', and Billings was a-screechin, and the sand was a-flyin'. Sand! Why, say! Do you see that extra bald place on the back of my head? Yes? Well, there was a two-inch thatch of hair there afore that sand blast ground it off.

"When I went up on the third jounce I noticed the Cut-through just ahead. Billings see it, too, and--would you b'lieve it?--the lunatic stood up, let go of the wheel with one hand, takes off his hat and waves it, and we charge down across them wet tide flats like death on the woolly horse, in Scriptur'.

"'Hi, yah! Yip!' whoops Billings. 'Come on in, fellers! The water's fine! Yow! Y-e-e-e! Yip!'

"For a second it left off rainin' sand, and there was a typhoon of mud and spray. I see a million of the prettiest rainbows--that is, I cal'lated there was a million; it's awful hard to count when you're bouncin' and prayin' and drowndin' all to once. Then we sizzed out of the channel, over the flats on t'other side, and on toward Setuckit.

"Never mind the rest of the ride. 'Twas all a sort of constant changin'