The Skipper and the Skipped Part 53

Moved by mutual impulse, Hiram and the Cap'n plodded through the deserted tavern, up-stairs and down-stairs. When they went into the kitchen the two hired girls were dragging their trunks to the door, and scornfully resisted all appeals to remain. They said it was a nasty rum-hole, and that they had reputations to preserve just as well as some folks who thought they were better because they had money.

Fine hand of the W.T.W.'s shown thus early in the game of tavern-keeping! There were even dirty dishes in the sink, so precipitate was the departure.

In the stable, the hostler, a one-eyed servitor, with the piping voice, wobbly gait, and shrunken features of the "white drunkard,"

was in his usual sociable state of intoxication, and declared that he would stick by them. He testified s...o...b..ringly as to his devotion to Mr. Parrott, declared that when the women descended Mr. Parrott confided to him the delicate task of "hiding the stuff," and that he had managed to conceal quite a lot of it.

"Well, dig it up and throw it away," directed Hiram.

"Oh, only a fool in the business buries rum," confided the hostler.

"I've been in the rum business, and I know. They allus hunts haymows and sullers. But I know how to hide it. I'm shrewd about them things."

"We don't want no rum around here," declared the showman with positiveness.

The hostler winked his one eye at him, and, having had a rogue's long experience in roguery, plainly showed that he believed a command of this sort to be merely for the purpose of publication and not an evidence of good faith.

"And there won't be much rum left round here if we only let him alone,"

muttered Hiram as he and the Cap'n walked back to the house. "I only wisht them hired girls had as good an attraction for stayin' as he's got."

"Look here, Hiram," said the Cap'n, stopping him on the porch, "it's all right to make loud talk to them Double-yer T. Double-yers, but there ain't any sense in makin' it to each other. You and me can't run this tavern no more'n hen-hawks can run a revival. Them wimmen--"

"You goin' to let them wimmen cackle for the next two years, and pa.s.s it down to their grandchildren how they done us out of all the money we put in here--two able-bodied business men like we be? A watch ain't no good only so long's it's runnin', and a tavern ain't, either. We've got to run this till we can sell it, wimmen or no wimmen--and you hadn't ought to be a quitter with thutty-five hunderd in it."

But there was very little enthusiasm or determination in the Cap'n's face. The sullenness deepened there when he saw a vehicle turn in at the tavern yard. It was a red van on runners, and on its side was inscribed:

T. BRACKETT, TINWARE AND YANKEE NOTIONS.

He was that round-faced, jovial little man who was known far and wide among the housewives of the section as "Balm o' Joy Brackett," on account of a certain liniment that he compounded and dispensed as a side-line. With the possible exception of one Marengo Todd, horse-jockey and also far-removed cousin of Mrs. Sproul, there was no one in her circle of cousins that the Cap'n hated any more cordially than Todd Ward Brackett. Mr. Brackett, by cheerfully hailing the Cap'n as "Cousin Aaron" at every opportunity, had regularly added to the latter's vehemence of dislike.

The little man nodded cheery greeting to the showman, cried his usual "Hullo, Cousin Aaron!" to the surly skipper, bobbed off his van, and proceeded to unharness.

"Well," sighed Hiram, resignedly, "guest Number One for supper, lodgin', and breakfast--nine s.h.i.+llin's and hossbait extry. 'Ev'ry little helps,' as old Bragg said when he swallowed the hoss-fly."

"There ain't any Todd Ward Brackett goin' to stop in _my_ tavern,"

announced the Cap'n with decision. Mr. Brackett overheard and whirled to stare at them with mild amazement. "That's what I said,"

insisted Cap'n Sproul, returning the stare. "Ferd Parrott ain't runnin' this tavern any longer. We're runnin' it, and you nor none of your stripe can stop here." He reflected with sudden comfort that there was at least one advantage in owning a hotel. It gave a man a chance at his foes.

"You're _runnin'_ it, be you?" inquired Mr. Brackett, raising his voice and glancing toward Broadway's store platform where loafers were listening.

"That's what we be," shouted the Cap'n.

"Well, I'm glad to hear that you're really _runnin'_ it--and that it ain't closed," said Mr. Brackett, "'cause I'm applyin' here to a public house to be put up, and if you turn me away, havin' plenty of room and your sign up, by ginger, I'll sue you under the statute and law made and pervided. I ain't drunk nor disorderly, and I've got money to pay--and I'll have the law on ye if ye don't let me in."

Mention of the law always had terrifying effect on Cap'n Sproul. He feared its menace and its intricacies. It was his nightmare that law had long been lying in wait on sh.o.r.e for him, and that once the land-sharks got him in their grip they would never let go until he was sucked dry.

"I've got witnesses who heard," declared Mr. Brackett, waggling mittened hand at the group on the platform. "Now you look out for yourself!"

He finished unharnessing his horse and led the animal toward the barn, carolling his everlasting lay about "Old Hip Huff, who went by freight to Newry Corner, in this State."

"There's just this much about it, Cap," Hiram hastened to say; "me 'n' you have got to run the shebang till we can unlo'd it. We can't turn away custom and kill the thing dead. I'll 'tend the office, make the beds, and keep the fires goin'. You--you--" He gazed at the Cap'n, faltering in his speech and fingering his nose apprehensively.

"Well, me what?" snapped the ex-master of the _Jefferson P. Benn_.

But his sparkling eyes showed that he realized what was coming.

"You've allus been braggin'," gulped Hiram, "what a dabster you was at cookin', havin' been to sea and--"

"Me--_me?_" demanded the Cap'n, slugging his own breast ferociously.

"Me put on an ap'un, and go out there, and kitchen-wallop for that jimbedoggified junacker of a tin-peddler? I'll burn this old shack down first, I will, by the--"

But Hiram entered fervent and expostulatory appeal.

"If you don't, we're sendin' that talkin'-machine on legs off to sue and get damages, and report this tavern from Clew to Hackenny, and spoil our chances for a customer, and knock us out generally."

He put his arm about the indignant Cap'n and drew him in where the loafers couldn't listen, and continued his anxious coaxings until at last Cap'n Sproul kicked and stamped his way into the kitchen, cursing so horribly that the cat fled. He got a little initial satisfaction by throwing after her the dirty dishes in the sink, listening to their cras.h.i.+ng with supreme satisfaction. Then he proceeded to get supper.

It had been a long time since he had indulged his natural taste for cookery. In a half-hour he had forgotten his anger and was revelling in the domain of pots and pans. He felt a sudden appet.i.te of his own for the good, old-fas.h.i.+oned plum-duff of s.h.i.+pboard days, and started one going. Then gingercake--his own kind--came to his memory. He stirred up some of that. He sent Hiram on a dozen errands to the grocery, and Hiram ran delightedly.

"I'll show you whether I can cook or not," was the Cap'n's proud boast to the showman when the latter bustled eagerly in from one of his trips. He held out a smoking doughnut on a fork. "There ain't one woman in ten can fry 'em without 'em soakin' fat till they're as heavy as a sinker."

Hiram gobbled to the last mouthful, expressing his admiration as he ate, and the Cap'n glowed under the praise.

His especial moment of triumph came when his wife and Mrs. Look, adventuring to seek their truant husbands, sat for a little while in the tavern kitchen and ate a doughnut, and added their astonished indors.e.m.e.nt. In the flush of his masterfulness he would not permit them to lay finger on dish, pot, or pan.

Hiram served as waiter to the lonely guest in the dining-room, and was the bearer of several messages of commendation that seemed to anger the Cap'n as much as other praise gratified him.

"Me standin' here cookin' for that sculpin!" he kept growling.

However, he ladled out an especially generous portion of plum-duff--the climax of his culinary art--and to his wrathful astonishment Hiram brought it back untasted.

"Mebbe it's all right," he said, apologetically, "but he was filled full, and he said it was a new dish to him and didn't look very good, and--"

The Cap'n grabbed the disparaged plum-duff with an oath and started for the dining-room.

"Hold on!" Hiram expostulated; "you've got to remember that he's a guest, Cap. He's--"

"He's goin' to eat what I give him, after I've been to all the trouble," roared the old skipper.

Mr. Brackett was before the fire in the office, hiccuping with repletion and stuffing tobacco into the bowl of his clay pipe.

"Anything the matter with that duff?" demanded the irate cook, pus.h.i.+ng the dish under Mr. Brackett's retreating nose. "Think I don't know how to make plum-duff--me that's sailed the sea for thutty-five years?"

"Never made no such remarks on your cookin'," declared the guest, clearing his husky throat in which the food seemed to be sticking.

"Hain't got no fault to find with that plum-duff?"

"Not a mite," agreed Mr. Brackett, heartily.

"Then you come back out here to the table and eat it. You ain't goin'

to slander none of my vittles that I've took as much trouble with as I have with this."