The Postmaster Part 6

"Take the bet," says I.

He went out chucklin'. I wondered what he had up his sleeve. A week later I found out. Congressman Shelton, our district Representative at Was.h.i.+n'ton, came to Ostable to look the post-office situation over and, lo and behold you, he comes as Major Cobden Clark's guest, to stay at his house.

When Jim Henry Jacobs learned that, he took me to one side to give me some brotherly advice.

"It's all up for Mary now," he says. "She can't win. Clark and Shelton are old chums in politics. There's only one chance to beat Payne and that's to bring forward a compromise candidate-a dark horse."

"Rubbis.h.!.+" I sung out. "Dark horse be hanged! Shelton's square as a brick. n.o.body can bribe him."

"It ain't a question of bribin'," he says. "If it was, you could bribe, too. Shelton is square, and that's why he'd welcome a compromise candidate. But if it comes to a fight between Mary Blaisdell and Abubus Payne, Abubus'll win because he's the Major's pet. Shelton knows the Major better than he knows you. Take my advice now and look out for the dark horse."

But I wouldn't listen. All the next hour I was ugly as a bear with a sore head and long afore dinner time I told Jacobs I was goin' for a sail in the _Glide_. "Goin' somewheres on salt water where the air's clean and not p'isoned by politics and automobiles and congressmen and Paynes," I told him.

I headed out of the harbor and then run, afore a wind that was fair but gettin' lighter all the time, up the bay. I sailed and sailed until some of my bad temper wore off and my appet.i.te begun to come back. All the time I was settin' at the tiller I was thinkin' over the post-office situation and, try as hard as I could to see the bright side for Mary Blaisdell, it looked pretty dark. The Major would give that Shelton man the time of his life and he'd talk Abubus to him to beat the cars. I couldn't get at the Congressman to put in an oar for Mary and-well, I'd have discounted my five-dollar bet for about seventy-five cents, at that time.

I thought and thought and sailed and sailed. When I came to myself and realized I was hungry the _Glide_ was miles away from Ostable. I came about and started to beat back; then I saw I was in for a long job. Let alone that the wind was ahead, 'twas dyin' fast, and if I knew the signs of a flat calm, there was one due in half an hour. I took as long tacks as I could, but I made mighty little progress.

On the second tack insh.o.r.e I came up abreast of Jonathan Crowell's house at Heron P'int. Jonathan's just a no-account longsh.o.r.eman or he wouldn't live in that place, which is the f.a.g-end of creation. There's a twenty-mile stretch of beach and pines and such close to the sh.o.r.e there, with a road along it. The first eight mile of that road is pretty good macadam and hard dirt. A land company tried to develop that section of beach once and they put in the road; but the land didn't sell and the company busted and after that eight mile the road is just beach sand, soft and coa.r.s.e. The strip of solid ground, with its pines and scrub-oaks, is, as I said afore, twenty mile long, but it's only a half mile or so wide. Between it and the main cape is a tremendous salt marsh, all cut up with cricks that n.o.body can get over without a boat.

Jonathan's is the only house for the whole twenty mile, except the lighthouse buildin's down at the end. The land company put up a few summer shacks on speculation, but they're all rickety and fallin' to pieces.

I knew Jonathan had gone to Bayport, quahaug rakin', and that his wife was visitin' over to Wellmouth, so when the _Glide_ crept in towards the beach and I saw a couple of folk by the Crowell house, I was surprised.

I didn't pay much attention to 'em, however, until I was just about ready to put the helm over and stand out into the bay again. Then they come runnin' down to the beach, yellin' and wavin' their arms. I thought one of 'em had a familiar look and, as I come closer, I got more and more sure of it. It didn't seem possible, but it was-one of those fellers on the beach was Major Cobden Clark.

"Hi-i!" yells the Major, hoppin' up and down and wavin' both arms as if he was practicin' flyin'; "Hi-i-i! you man in the boat! Come here! I want you!"

That was him, all over. He wanted me, so of course I must come. My feelin's in the matter didn't count at all. I run the _Glide_ in as nigh the beach as I dared and then fetched her up into what little wind there was left.

"Ahoy there, Major," I sung out. "Is that you?"

"Hey?" he shouts. "Do you know-Why, I believe it's Snow! Is that you, Snow?"

"Yes, it's me," I hollers. "What in time are you doin' way over here?"

"Never mind what I'm doin'," he roared. "You come ash.o.r.e here. I want you."

If I hadn't been so curious to know what he was doin', I'd have seen him in glory afore I ever thought of obeyin' an order from him; but I was curious. While I was considerin' the breeze give a final puff and died out altogether. That settled it. I might as well go ash.o.r.e as stay aboard. I couldn't get anywhere without wind. So I hove anchor and dropped the mains'l.

"Come on!" he kept yellin'. "What are you waitin' for? Don't you hear me say I want you?"

I had on my long-legged rubber boots and the water wa'n't more'n up to my knees. When I got good and ready, I swung over the side and waded to the beach.

"h.e.l.lo, Maje," I says, brisk and easy, "you ought not to holler like that. You'll bust a b'iler. Your face looks like a red-hot stove already."

He mopped his forehead. "Shut up, you old fool," says he. "Think I'm here to listen to a lecture about my face? You carry Mr. Shelton and me out to that boat of yours. We want you to sail us home."

So the other chap was the Congressman. I'd guessed as much. I went up to him and held out my hand.

"Pleased to know you, Mr. Shelton," says I. "Had the pleasure of votin'

for you last fall."

Shelton shook and smiled. "This is Cap'n Snow, isn't it?" he says, his eyes twinklin'. "Glad to meet you, I'm sure. I've heard of you often."

"I shouldn't wonder," says I. "Major Clark and me are old chums and I cal'late he's mentioned my name at least once. Hey, Maje?"

The Major grinned. I grinned, too; and Shelton laughed out loud.

"I never saw such a talkin' machine in my life," snaps Clark. "Don't stop to tell us the story of your life. Take us aboard that boat of yours. You've got to get us back to Ostable, d'you understand?"

"Have, hey?" says I. "I appreciate the honor, but.... However, maybe you won't mind tellin' me what you're doin' here, twelve miles from nowhere?"

The Major was too mad to answer, so Shelton did it for him.

"Well," he says, smilin' and with a wink at his partner, "we _came_ in the Major's auto, but-"

He stopped without finis.h.i.+n' the sentence.

"The auto?" says I. "You came in the auto? Well, why don't you go back in it? What's the matter? Has it broke down? Humph! I ain't surprised; them things are always breakin' down, 'specially the cheap ones."

_That_ stirred up the kettle. The Major give me to understand that his auto cost six thousand dollars and was the best blessedty-blank car on earth. It wa'n't the auto's fault. It hadn't broke down. It had stuck in the eternal and everlastin' sand and they couldn't get it out, that was the trouble.

"But Abubus can get it out, can't he?" says I. "Abubus runs it like a bird, you told me so yourself. Now a bird can fly, and if you want to get from here to Ostable in anything like a straight line, you've _got_ to fly. By the way, where is Abubus?"

Three or four more questions, and a hogshead of profanity on the Major's part, and I had the whole story. He and Shelton had started for a ride way up the Cape. They was cal'latin' to get home by eleven o'clock, but the machine went so fast that they got where they was goin' early and had time to spare. Shelton happened to remember that he'd sunk some money in the land company I mentioned and he thought he'd like to see the place where 'twas sunk. He asked Abubus if they couldn't run along the beach road a ways. Abubus hemmed and hawed and didn't know for sure-he never was sure about anything. But the Major said course they could; that car could go anywhere. So they turned in way up by Sandwich and come b'ilin' down alongsh.o.r.e. Long's the old land company road lasted they was all right, but when, runnin' thirty-five miles an hour, they whizzed off the end of that road, 'twas different. The automobile lit in the soft sand like a snow-plow and stopped-and stayed. They tried to dig it out with boards from Jonathan Crowell's pig pen, but the more they dug the deeper it sunk. At last they give it up; nothin' but a team of horses could haul that machine out of that sand. So Abubus starts to walk the ten or eleven miles back to civilization and livery stables and the Major and Shelton waited for him. And the more they waited the hungrier and madder Clark got. 'Twas all Abubus's fault, of course. He ought to have had more sense than to run that way on that road, anyhow.

He ought to have known better than to get into that sand, a feller that had lived in sand all his life. He was an incompetent jacka.s.s. Well, I knew that afore, but it certainly did me good to hear the Major confirm my judgment.

I went over and looked at the automobile. It had always acted like a mighty lively contraption, but now it looked dead enough. And not only dead, but two-thirds buried.

"Well?" fumes Clark, "how much longer have we got to stay in this hole?"

"It's consider'ble of a hole," says I, "and it looks to me as if she'd stay there till Abubus gets back with a pair of horses. Considerin' how far he's got to tramp and how long it'll be afore he can get a pair, I cal'late the hole'll be occupied until some time in the night."

That wa'n't what he meant and I knew it. Did I suppose he and Shelton was goin' to wait and starve until the middle of the night? No, sir; the auto could stay where it was; he and the Congressman would sail home with me in the _Glide_.

"I hope you ain't in any partic'lar hurry," says I, lookin' out over the bay. There wa'n't a breath of air stirrin' and the water was slick and s.h.i.+ny as a starched s.h.i.+rt. "The _Glide_ runs by wind power and there's no wind. This calm may last one hour or it may last two. As long as it lasts I stay where I am."

What! Did I think they would stay there just because I was too lazy to get my whoopety-bang fish-dory under way? Stay there in that sand-heap-sand-heap was the politest of the names he called Crowell's plantation-and starve?

"Oh," says I. "I won't starve. I'm goin' to get dinner."

Dinner! The very name of it was like a life-preserver to a feller who'd gone under for the second time.

"Can you get us dinner?" roars the Major. "By George, if you can I'll-"

"Not for you I can't," I says. "You live accordin' to the Payne schedule, on prunes and pecans and such. The prune crop 'round here is a failure and I don't see a pecan tree in Jonathan's back yard. No, any dinner I'd get would give you compound, gallopin' dyspepsy, and I can't be responsible for your death-I love you too much. But I cal'late I can scratch up a meal that'll keep folks with common insides from peris.h.i.+n'

of hunger. Anyhow, I'm goin' to try."