Читать книгу The Victors; a romance of yesterday morning & this afternoon - Robert Barr - Страница 6

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Ben and Jim thought Farmer Byfield rather a quiet, reserved man the evening they first met him, but they laboured under no such delusion next morning. The farmer’s voice rang through the house in vibrant tones that rendered all further sleep impossible, as indeed was the intention.

“Get up; get up,” he cried. “What’s the matter with you? Want to lie in bed all day? Think it’s Sunday, I s’pose, and here it’s half-past four if it’s a minute, and no one to feed the horses yet. Say, Sam, d’you hear?”

“Oh, I hear all right enough,” growled Sam, the eldest son, sleepily. “Nobody could help hearing if he was alive, and within a mile of the house.”

“Get up, then. Ought t’have been out long ago. Looks like rain too; thought last night it did.”

“No such luck,” murmured the hired man. But they all got up nevertheless, yawning industriously.

The farmer had put time forward when he said it was half-past four. It was not so late in the day, and there was still time to do a good morning’s work. Every clock in the house was deliberately set from half to three-quarters of an hour fast, and for some occult reason they were always kept thus far in the future, although they deceived nobody. Byfield had been afoot for some time and had already set the fire going in the kitchen stove before calling the others. A successful farmer differs from the Centurion of Scripture in that he says “come” instead of “go.”

The first to appear was not one of those called so vociferously, but a strikingly handsome and healthy young girl of about eighteen, her large eyes lustrous and dewy with sleep. Her father had placed the kettle on the stove, where it was already singing, and the girl, hardly yet awake, set herself to the preparation of the ample and early breakfast. Presently, in the broad pan, were frying the disks of potato sliced from those boiled the day before, simmering and browning, of delicious odour, a scent for a hungry man to sniff appetisingly in the keen, cool air of the morning. From another pan the no less temptsome aroma of frying ham mingled with that of the bubbling coffee in the capacious tin coffee-pot, set back on the top of the stove near the oven. Lottie was spreading the tablecloth when her brother came in, rubbing his eyes.

“Hello, Lot,” was his greeting, “we raked in three young men for you last night—two in the loft and one out in the barn. You pays your money and takes your choice.”

“You keep quiet,” answered the girl; “it’s time you were out at the stables. Breakfast will be ready before you have the horses fed.”

“It won’t be ready sooner’n I am, and as for the horses, what does a fellow keep a father for? I tell you, Lot, that fellow out in the barn can talk. You ought to hear him; just like a streak. I guess his tongue is hung on a swivel.”

“Who is he? Another hired man?”

“No, I guess they’re all three pedlars. The fellow outside’s got a horse and rig you wouldn’t give ten cents for.”

Lottie gave expression to an impatient ejaculation of contempt. A hired man was a poor enough creature in her estimation, but he was a prince to a pedlar. The hired man had passed through the kitchen while brother and sister were talking together, and had gone quietly out. Ben and Jim now appeared, and gave a cordial “good-morning” to the pair, which was returned with warmth, at least by Sam.

“If you fellows want to wash,” said Sam, as if it were a custom the observance of which might be open to conscientious objection, “there’s a tin basin out on the stoop, and water in the rain barrel under the eaves-trough.”

Lottie seemed barely to cast a glance at the young men, but there was an unmistakable air of town about them that swiftly mitigated her previous disdainful classification of them as pedlars. While they were conversing with her brother she went quietly to the stoop, whisked away the soiled towel that hung on a peg under the veranda and substituted a clean one.

“I wonder if your friend is up yet, and if he has given his horse a feed. The nag looked as if he needed one badly last night.”

“The horse is ours, not his,” said Ben.

“That so? I thought he owned the whole outfit.”

“He talks as if he owned the earth,” put in Jim.

“Oh, isn’t he a friend of yours?”

“We never saw him till last evening. We’ve been trying to do a little in the peddling line—mighty little it was, too—during the last few weeks, and this man came on us while we were resting near Ann Arbor. He hadn’t any—”

“Still we don’t know anything against him,” interrupted the conscientious Ben, who, with a glance at his companion, intimated that perhaps it was just as well not to talk too freely in the presence of strangers, a hint which Jim accepted in silence.

“Of course,” continued Ben, “we don’t know anything much in his favour either. All I wanted to say was, that you are about as well acquainted with him as we are.”

“Oh, I see. I thought you were all the one crowd.”

“No, Ben and I are the one crowd. Mr. Maguire is the other,” said Jim.

They were out on the stoop at the side of the kitchen, and the farm boy of twenty still lingered near them as they put the tin basin and the collected rain to their uses. There was little in their conversation that indicated a college training, yet there was an undefinable something that fascinated Sam and held him in bondage. He saw in them advance agents of the great and stirring world of which he knew little except by hearsay, and they presented to him all the mystery of things unknown, although in point of fact they were probably quite as innocent and ignorant of the ways of the city as he. The farmer approached from the barn and interrupted the conference. “Say, Sam, where ye been all morning? Get a move on you and help the hired man.”

Sam achieved the requisite motion, and the three walked together to the farm buildings some distance from the house, greeted in advance by the boisterous laughter of the hired man, which led Ben and Jim to the accurate conclusion that Maguire was up and holding some converse with the help.

“Hello, boys!” roared Maguire, when the three hove in sight. “This is a fine time in the morning to be getting astir. If I were paying you wages you would hear from me. This man and I and father having done all the chores, now you appear on the scene. I’ve fed Rosinante, and the grateful animal said to me, ‘I suppose those two cusses are asleep yet.’ A merciful man’s merciful to his beast.”

“Or even to some one else’s beast,” commented Jim.

“Quite so, quite so. The horse doesn’t mind as long’s somebody puts down the hay.”

The hired man laughed heartily.

“Jest hear him talk! You’d think he’d been up fur hours, an’ the square fact is I come durn near feeding him to the horses myself. He says I stuck the pitchfork in his leg as ’twas. I tell him I took him fur fodder ’cause he’s so green,” and this time the hired man was merry over his own wit.

“That’s about right,” admitted Maguire, “the only drawback in sleeping on a hay-mow is that some fool will come along before it’s hardly light and try to jam you down the horse’s manger before you’re awake. Still, I suppose he thinks all flesh is grass and as all grass becomes hay by and by, he should therefore throw any tramp found in a mow down to the horses. Is that your idea?”

“Jest about it,” chuckled the hired man.

“We would like to have a little talk with you privately,” said Monro to Maguire.

“What! Before breakfast? Not likely. Business transacted at this office only during business hours. Call upon a man of business in hours of business, only on business, transact your business and go about your business, and give him time to attend to his business, or words to that effect. Eh, hired man? Isn’t that right? That’s my motto, and I’m giving it to ’em straight, as the old woman said.”

“You bet,” agreed the hired man.

When the morning’s work about the barn was finished, they all went together to the house and in to breakfast. Here, for a wonder, Maguire was momentarily nonplussed, for he had not expected to see so pretty a girl at the table. The night’s lodging in the hay had left on the young man many a particle to attest the nature of his bedding, and his hair was powdered with clover seed. It was one of Patrick’s principles to make himself entirely at home wherever he was, and his method of doing this was to appear as much as possible like his host, so he had allowed the reminiscences of the hay-mow to remain on his person, a neglect which he regretted as soon as he saw before him the trim figure of the fair Lottie. The farmer was already seated at the head of the table heaping up liberal portions of the food provided on plate after plate. Each one sat down as he came in, without ceremony, throwing his hat in a corner or leaving it out on the stoop. Mrs. Byfield was busy pouring out the coffee, and a great pitcher of milk stood at her elbow with glasses round it should any prefer the fluid, cool from the cellar, to the beverage hot from the coffee-pot.

“Say!” cried the hilarious hired man to all and sundry, “he’s a regular hayseed, ain’t he? That’s what I tell him. I guess you’d better send him out to the fields, Mr. Byfield, rather’n let him go ’lectioneering.”

The farmer took no sort of notice, but attended diligently to the business at hand, the sooner to come at his own breakfast. A meal with him was not a thing to be enjoyed, but a necessary and regrettable function to be finished speedily, so that the real occupation of a man’s life might go on with as little interruption as possible.

“I—I—I think I’ll just have a brush up before sitting down,” stammered Patrick, “if you’ll excuse me for a moment.”

“Better let me go over you with the currycomb,” cried the hired man in great glee, receiving a malignant glance from the victim, which showed that the humour, such as it was, proved not so welcome as it had appeared to be in the barnyard.

Maguire had recovered his equanimity when he re-entered.

“My, ain’t he pretty?” said the hired man, loth to give up his advantage.

“Now that’s kind of ye,” said Patrick, “for it’s not a thing I’d have thought of saying about you from one year’s end to the other. I’m a truthful man, de ye see? I’ll take a glass of milk if ye please, Miss Byfield, it looks cool and temptsome to a thirsty person.”

The girl coloured at being thus directly addressed as “Miss,” and poured out the milk. There had been no introductions, but Pat saw at a glance that she was the daughter of the house, for, although one or more hired men were regarded as indispensable on the fields in the olden days, a hired girl was considered effete luxury in the house, as unnecessary as she was expensive. Aside from this, domestics were difficult to obtain, the girls, if inclined to “work out,” preferring the higher wages, greater freedom and lighter duties of the city to the slavery of a farmhouse.

The hired man, suddenly silenced by the unexpected retort of the stranger, a retort to which he could find no effective reply—in fact a suitable answer did not occur to him till the following Sunday—applied himself diligently to the breakfast before him. Maguire, having cleared the way of an inconvenient interloper, easily kept the conversation within his own range, leaving no opening for embarrassing rejoinders or equally embarrassing silences.

“Mr. Byfield, I would like to have a talk with you about the coming contest, but I suppose you won’t have yery much time to spare after breakfast.”

“I won’t have any,” replied the farmer with rural bluntness.

“That’s what I thought,” said Maguire, not giving the hired man time to chuckle. “All I want to know is where a list of the voters of this section can be had.”

The farmer curtly gave him the information.

“Well, then, I’ll drive over there and copy it. That won’t take long. The next thing will be to have someone who knows the men tell me who are certain to vote for the ditch and who are certain to vote against it. I suppose you could do that this evening, Mr. Byfield?”

The farmer made no answer for some moments. Although hospitable to those he knew, he had no desire to burden himself with the board and lodging of strangers, and election day was still some distance ahead in the future. Here were three unknown men, with one horse, and to judge by the confident manner in which their spokesman mentioned his return, as if it were a settled fact, they must imagine the bounty of the farmhouse was boundless. And all this in the busiest time of the year, when everyone about the place was overworked, especially the women, whose already onerous tasks would be increased with every additional chair drawn up to the table. After all, why should these three project themselves on him rather than on any other resident of the neighbourhood? The clear morning light had dispelled the glamour of the night before, and the farmer could not imagine what possessed him when he let them come to his house as indefinite guests. Maguire watched him narrowly, as with contracted brows these thoughts percolated through his mind, and the young man seemed to guess their meaning intuitively, although he said nothing and waited for his answer.

“Well, I dun’no ’bout that,” slowly said the farmer at last. “I thought that was what you were goin’ to find out by peddling round the district.”

“Yes, I’m going to peddle round the district to find out how the doubtful cases stand, but there’s no use in my wasting time finding out what’s already known. It won’t take you five minutes to go over the list with me, and I can tick off them that’s this side or that side of the ditch, then I’ll tackle the others. The doubtful fellows are my pizen.”

“I don’t know’s I’ve got much interest in this ’lection anyhow,” said the goaded farmer, to the astonishment of his family, who knew that he had. The hired man leered across the table at Maguire, and leaning over the fried potatoes said in a whisper to Sam, audible to the pedlar, “I guess somebody’s goin’ to get left on this deal.”

“Oh, you ain’t got much interest in it, ain’t you?” remarked Maguire, affably enough, but with colour rising. “I understood last night that you had. Of course the trouble with you is that you ain’t got the time to bother with it, ’specially right in the middle of harvest.”

“That’s it,” replied the farmer, visibly relieved at finding his change of front thus accounted for.

“Why, that’s all right,” continued Maguire, nonchalantly. “A man tends to this sort of thing in cash or kind, as the saying is. Fellows that have time give time; fellows that have money give money. I’ll get a good subscription out of you for the fund, and then I won’t bother you again till election’s over.”

Byfield gasped, and for the first time during the meal stopped eating, staring incredulously at his guest.

“The fund? What fund?”

“Why, the election fund, of course. You don’t expect to shoot quail without burning some powder, do you?”

“But you said last night you didn’t want a cent. You said it to me when I suspected that there was some grab game at the bottom of all your talk. I’ll leave it to any one who was there that you did. They all heard ye.”

“Of course he did,” chimed in the hired man, with ringing indignation in his voice. “You said to him, Mr. Byfield—I heerd ye myself—you says, ‘Whatter you going to make out of this?’ An’ he says, ‘I hain’t a-goin’t’ make anything. I’m goin’ t’ peddle.’ Them’s his very words. They wa’n’t no talk of a fund then. That’s what he said, didn’t he, Sam?”

But Sam was watching the game and saying nothing. He felt in his bones that the stranger was more than a match for all arrayed against him, and he thought the hired man would have been wiser if he had held his peace. The hired man, meeting no response from the father, for whom he was the champion, or the son to whom he had appealed, now turned to Ben and Jim.

“You were there. Didn’t he say he wouldn’t take a cent?”

“That was certainly my understanding of his remark,” said Jim.

“There!” cried the hired man in triumph, thankful, in the circumstances, for small mercies. “There, what did I tell you?”

Maguire, who was no small eater, had helped himself to various dishes during the interval, and had thanked Lottie with ingratiating politeness for another glass of milk, again bringing the colour to the silent girl’s cheeks by his frank, admiring gaze while he held forward his glass. He allowed a perceptible interval to pass before he spoke and then entirely ignored the energetic hired man, who now began to wish he had kept out of the discussion, scenting coming ignominy and defeat.

“You were quite correct, Mr. Byfield. I want nothing at all for myself. The fund isn’t for me to draw on, not a bit of it, but to pay the just and reasonable expenses of the election. It’s always necessary, if a side is to win. Whichever side has the most money is the one that counts the most votes these days.”

“That doesn’t sound very honest,” put in Ben the incorruptible, speaking for the first time. The girl looked from one to the other in wonder. There was evidently a split in the visiting delegation, and she could not understand it. Nevertheless she was keenly interested in the discussion, sharing her brother’s evident admiration for the young man who, with every one against him, held his own, serenely affable, and, besides, brought a softer note into his voice when he addressed her, which no one else had ever done.

“My dear fellow, you simply don’t know what you’re talking about. Where is the dishonesty in paying legitimate expenses? The shoe is on the other foot, I imagine. Take, for instance, the necessary board bill. I believe in paying my way wherever I go, or whatever I am doing. Of course, it might be said that Mr. Byfield, possessing a large farm, well stocked and successfully cultivated, could quite easily support us while we were canvassing on his side of politics, but I say, why should he any more than the others? Now, I can’t board round while I’m on this job, because I’ve got to give all my attention to the business in hand. I pay two dollars a week while I stay here, and I’ve been at two-dollar-a-day hotels where I wasn’t so comfortable. I ought, by rights, if you talk of strict honesty, to pay at least a dollar a day here, but perhaps Mrs. Byfield will let me off for two dollars a week.”

“Indeed,” said the hospitable Mrs. Byfield, “you’re not going to pay a cent while you stay here. It’s not likely.”

“We haven’t come to keeping boarders,” cried Lottie indignantly, for at this time people in the city never thought of spending their vacations on a farm. Byfield himself said nothing, but his eyes twinkled when his guest spoke of paying for his board. This was a horse of a different colour. Every little helps on a farm, where cash is sometimes scarce. Sam laughed under his breath very gently and winked across the table at his sister, who did not take this familiarity in good part, tossing her head slightly, with a very fetching little frown on her brow. Sam was beginning to see the way the game was running and became more and more confident that his estimate of the stranger had not been a false one.

“That’s all right,” said Maguire airily. “You see this here ditch is a public affair. And we all know what public improvements mean. There’s so much estimated at first, and the job’s about half done when that amount is spent. Then there’s no use in letting it lie unfinished, so there’s another appropriation and nobody to blame, and that’s the way it goes. It isn’t so much the first cost of this here dreen or the second cost, although these will pile up the taxes for the next ten years; it’s the repairs year by year, the banks caving in where the deep cuttings are, the silting up other places, the sweeping away of the bridges with the first spring freshet and all that sort of thing. Why, what’s a quarter each or half a dollar from the taxpayer to stop the beginning of this dreen, a dreen fur cash as well as for water? What’s fifty cents apiece when the taxes in the first year would be ten times as much? No, sir; none of this fund goes into my pocket, but I think it’s only fair and just that some of it should go into Mr. Byfield’s pocket if he boards the men who are going to defeat this thing. That’s how I look at it. You can’t have fried eggs without breaking the shells, and talking of fried eggs I think I’ll have one more, Mrs. Byfield. I admit I like good cooking, and that’s the reason I want to stay here, where I’m well off. Thanks, Mrs. Byfield.”

“We don’t want any fund to pay our board bill,” said Ben. “We have nothing to do with this election, and are going away this morning.”

“Right you are,” confirmed Maguire, cheerfully. “There speaks the free and independent pedlar. That’s correct. Pay as you go is my motto. Of course, if you don’t electioneer it isn’t to be expected that you should ask for your board bill to be paid out of the fund. So if you boys fork out seventy-five cents each after breakfast I should say that would clear you cheaply enough, for you have had more than the worth of it.”

Ben reddened, remembering that he had no money, and well aware that Maguire knew it; but Jim spoke up confidently:

“Cash or kind, Maguire, as you said a little while ago. If we haven’t the ready money we have the goods, so don’t get anxious on our account, or afraid that we will appeal to your generosity.”

“Then,” continued Maguire, ignoring the last remark, “there will have to be a little something in hand to help the doubtful voters to see the right side of this question. What does it cost in this section to make a man vote our way?”

“You can have my vote for fifty cents,” said the hired man, anxious to retrieve his lost position as a humourist.

“That would be half a dollar more than it was worth, for I’ve known men take good money and give bad votes. I’m a commercial man, and I only buy where I’m sure of the delivery of the goods.”

The hired man heaved a sigh and shoved back his chair.

“It’s nothing here but talk, talk, talk, and I’m a worker. I can’t fool away any more time, even if I am working for somebody else. Talk’s cheap.”

There was a general shoving back of chairs as the industrious hired man refused to dawdle longer, and presently all hands left for the fields, with the exception of our three pedlars. Ben and Jim waited out in the barnyard for the third of the trio, who had remained at the house apparently to talk with the women. The two discussed, with a discouraged air, the nature of the goods that would be most acceptable to their host for the accommodation they had received.

“I suppose the mother would like something useful and the daughter something ornamental,” said Jim, confessing at the same time that he knew little of feminine preference.

“I suppose so. We’d better take our stock up to the house and let them choose what they want.”

As this was agreed to, they heard Patrick approach, whistling merrily.

“Well, gentlemen,” he cried on seeing them, “we were to have a little confab, you said. Now that breakfast’s over, I am ready to talk on any subject under the sun till next meal time.”

“We haven’t anything to discuss,” said Ben, slowly. “All we want is our licence, and then we propose to pay up our bill and get on our way.”

“Oh, the licence. Thunder, I thought we settled that last night. Do youse want to have a fight every morning over it? Why can’t we have one good tussle that will last a week? I hate to think of waking up every morning and saying to myself there’s that durned licence to be fought for after breakfast. I wonder which’ll lick? I’ve simply got to have this licence till after election, for the opposition will be sure to pounce on me for it; ’twould be bad politics not to, and some one is bound to think of it. You see, I’ve got to take to the peddling tack for a while at first, and they’d be dead certain to nab me before I got through. Say, boys, you must let me keep this paper for another week. I’m a peaceable man and don’t want to be always fighting.”

“We are not going to fight for it. The licence is ours. If you refuse to give it up, we won’t say another word about it, but will go to the nearest justice of the peace and make complaint. Then we will either get it or not, as the law holds.”

“How will you explain your hoodwinking of the law at Ann Arbor? I thought we thrashed all this out before. What’s the use of going over the old ground?”

“We will tell the truth and take our chances.”

Maguire saw that they meant it. He thrust his hands deep in his trousers pockets, and with bent head and a frown on his brow walked up and down before them for a few moments, seemingly meditating on the situation.

“Look here, boys,” he said at last, “you’ve got me in a hole, and I know it, and you know it, so there’s no use of me pretending that I’m up on the surface of the earth when I’m not. Your position is legal, and mine isn’t, so there’s where the trouble comes in. A man whose fix isn’t according to law’s no good, unless he’s got money, and I ain’t got enough. Now why can’t you fellows be decent and jump in and help a fellow? I’ll divide up square, so help me. Yes, I will—straight.”

“You say you are going to work for nothing,” said Jim, “so in that case there will be nothing to divide.”

“Don’t you make any mistake. There’ll be something to divvy before this ditch question is settled. You can bet your boots on that.”

“If my boots are safe on such a wager, then you’ve lied to these people, so how can you expect us to trust you?”

At the word “lied” Pat’s eyes flashed dangerously and his right fist clenched, but he seemed to pull himself in immediately after, and he replied smoothly enough:

“Oh, I never go back on a pal. Now, look here, you fellows, you’re cramping me. You’re not giving me a fair show; honour bright, you ain’t. You can queer my game right here, and I don’t see how I can help myself, if you shut down on me. Now, all I want to make is a living. These jays here will get the worth of their money, don’t you fret. Why can’t you be easy on a poor devil and not shove him in a corner merely because you’ve got the chance? You won’t feel any better when you’ve done it. It won’t do you a cent’s worth of good, and it will do me a lot of harm. Now, see here, fellows. You are two friends, and you don’t like me, I can see that. I like youse two, but that don’t make any differ. We’ll let it go at that. Youse have had a good schooling, and I haven’t. I’ve got nothing to keep me but my ten fingers and about an ounce of brains to tell ’em what to do. You fellows ain’t getting along very well in the world, but you’ve got an eddication, and you’re chums with each other. I tell you, boys, to a lonely devil that never had a friend to say a good word for him since he was born that’s a mighty lot. I’ve been watching you two, and I can see that youse’d stand by each other through thick and thin, and if one gits a licking the other’ll take his share, and no squealing, and if one makes half a dollar the other gets a quarter. Now, I’d give anything to have a friend like that, and if I had to I’d kill the man that hurt him, an’ don’t you forget it.”

“Look here, Mr. Maguire—” put in Ben.

“Pat’s the name, or Patrick for short.”

“Very well, then, Pat, I ask you to turn back your recollection to last evening. You were in a hole then, and a worse one than you are in now, for the law was right on your heels.”

“True for you. Never a truer word spoken.”

“Here were we two, who stood by you as staunchly as any friend could desire, although neither of us had ever seen you before. We got you out of the hole at some risk to ourselves, for you have threatened us once or twice since with the consequences of what we did. Very well; how did you repay us? You jumped on us and knocked us down on the road and held us there because we asked back what was our own. A man who will act like that doesn’t need to wonder why he hasn’t any friends. That isn’t the way to make ’em.”

“By the holy smoke, Ben, you’re just dead right. I’m a mean, low-down, insignificant cuss. There’s a streak in me that ought to be kicked clean out of this here county. I know it, and I’ve said it to myself a dozen times. When a fellow comes up to me spitting on his hands I line out for his jaw without ever thinking any more of the consequences than I think about breathing. You see, you fellows sort of squared up to me last night, an’ I forgot in a minute what you had done for me, so help me, I did. Mean? I’m so blamed mean that ... But say! When you meet a fellow like me, what does the college say you ought to do with him? Give him another punch in the head, kick him down a bit further in the ditch and make him meaner than ever when he gets out, or say to him, as you said just now, encouraging like, ‘Pat, you’re a dirty God-forsaken whelp; why don’t you brace up and quit being a thief or a sneak?’ Then if there’s any good in a fellow, talking soft and soothing like that to him will bring it out, and if there’s not, if he’s sneak and puppy clean through, why you’ve done what you could, haven’t you? And you feel better after it.”

While this appeal was being made, Jim turned his eyes from Maguire and gazed at his friend, a slight smile parting his lips. He knew the serious undercurrent of Ben’s nature: his sensitive regard for his duty toward his neighbour. Whether it was blind luck, deep guile, or intuition that led the glib talker off on this line Monro was unable to guess, but he was well aware that nothing could be more effective so far as Ben was concerned, and he watched the result of the other’s breathless words with amused interest.

“What do you want us to do?” said Ben in a low voice.

“I want you to help me. I want you to stand by me for a little while. You’re thinking of peddling. Good enough. What better district to peddle in than right round here? It’s just as good or just as bad as any other place. You can perhaps put in a word on the ’lectioneering, but you don’t need to unless you like. I can tend to all that. I want you to let me have your horse and rig and the licence; I’ll take good care of all three. I’ve got to scour round this county, and nobody here has got a horse to spare, and if he had he wouldn’t lend it to me. These farmers think more of their horses than they do of their wives.”

“You propose, then, that we lend you the horse and waggon and go on tramp ourselves?” said Jim. “Well, I call that cold cheek.”

“Hold on, Jim,” cried Ben, “wait a minute and perhaps we can make some arrangement. You’ve got a shoulder pack, Maguire?”

“Yes; but there’s no need for you to walk. You come along with me in the rig. I ain’t going to do any peddling. You see it will be like this. We come to a house, and you fellows can go in and sell things to the women. I’ll have to tramp out to the back fields or wherever the farmer is and have a chat with him. That will give you lots of time to palaver the women. I guess that where you boys fail in peddling is in not flattering your customers. That’s the secret of success in this world. Butter ’em, butter ’em. If you tend to that, the goods will sell themselves. I may be able to give you a hint or two as we go along, and if you intend sticking to the business you’ll find my pointers worth listening to. Now, boys, you haven’t been raising my courage just to throw me down again, have you? You ain’t going back on me, are you?”

“What do you say, Jim?” Ben turned to his friend. “I don’t want to be hard on anybody, and if you’re willing to stay I am.”

“You couldn’t be hard on anybody if you tried, Ben. I’ll do whatever you do, of course; but, see here, Maguire, you’ve been talking loud about money ever since we met you. You seem to know how to make it and to despise us who don’t. Why not buy our horse and rig, and we’ll throw in the licence? We’ll sell you the whole outfit for twenty dollars.”

“So help me, boys, I was only blowing. I always blow about money. If people think you really need anything they won’t give you a hand; if they think you’re flush, then it’s all right.”

“What Ben has just said disproves that.”

“Present company excepted, boys, always. I got two dollars out of that fresh inspector at Ann Arbor, and before that I had something less than five dollars. That’s my pile, less than seven dollars, all told. Search me if you don’t believe me. Then, there’s the stuff in my kit, but that don’t amount to much. I ain’t no Vanderbilt in disguise, you know, though I may look like the family. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If you boys stand by me till this cruel war is over, I’ll guarantee to give you twenty-five dollars for the mule and army waggon, and you can do what you darn please with the ammunition. Is it a bargain?”

“Oh, we won’t hold you to that, unless you want to keep to it yourself. I don’t see where there’s any twenty-five dollars to be made in this contest, but we won’t desert until the votes are counted. After that, you understand, you are to let us have back what belongs to us, or else buy out the business.”

“All right, Ben, signed, sealed and delivered, witness our hand, so help me. And you’re white men, you two, clear through and away out beyond. I’ll deal square with you, but you mustn’t kick if I do some tall talk to other folks. Of course I’m not in this thing for my health, and if old Byfield or anyone else in this district thinks I am, that simply shows he wants to get something for nothing, which is against the rules of the peddling business. Nobody would ever be taken in in this world if it wasn’t for their trying to bunco somebody else. The farming community always loses money thinking it is getting a lump of gold, and then they feel disappointed when they find it’s only a brick. But we’ve had talk enough, now let’s get to work. We’ll hitch up the team and spread ourselves over the cultivated lands. But I tell you, boys, I’ll never forget that you are white men clear through and down to the ground, may I drop in my tracks if I do.”