Jap Herron Part 11

"Bravely said," shouted Granger. "The bank will rebuild with brick.

Who else builds on Main street?"

Before the end of the following week the town was humming with industry. Every hack brought its contingent of insurance adjusters, and merchants elbowed contractors in the little telegraph office, in endeavors to get supplies. On Thursday a curious crowd stood watching Ellis and the boys run the blistered but still faithful Was.h.i.+ngton press in the boiling sun.

"Goin' to get winter after a while, j.a.p," shouted one of the bystanders. "You'll have to wear ear m.u.f.fs to get out your paper."

j.a.p grinned and swung the lever around methodically.

"What are you going to do, Ellis?" asked the honorable member from the "Halls of Justice," who had hurried to his little home town in her hour of trouble. "There ain't a vacant shack in town. It seems a darned shame that you'll have to give up, after starving with the town till it gets its toes set in gravel at last. Now that the railroad is running this way like a scared wolf, the town needs a paper worse than ever."

"Who said they was going to quit?" demanded Judge Bowers pugnaciously.

"They ain't! Ellis is goin' to have a two-story brick, with a printin'

press that runs itself. This here town ain't no quitter." He glared fiercely at Harlow.

j.a.p lingered with Ellis until the last of the day's work was finished.

As he started for home he came upon an animated group, in the shade of the half-burned drug store. Behind a pile of wreckage, Bill was holding court. j.a.p stopped short. Bill was telling a lurid tale of superhuman strength and dare-devil bravery, of which j.a.p Herron was the hero, a tale that grew with every telling. A wave of embarra.s.sment swept over j.a.p. As he turned hastily away, he felt a soft clutch on his arm. He looked back. Two sparkling black eyes were looking up into his.

"I think that you are the bravest boy in the world," whispered Isabel Granger, "and--and I am glad I kissed you that time."

j.a.p stared at her, stunned by a new emotion. In another moment she was gone, flying across the street in the direction of her home.

"Anybody but j.a.p would 'a took her up on that," insinuated Bill, who had heard Isabel's last words.

j.a.p turned a murderous look upon him. The crowd of girls t.i.ttered as they dispersed. When supper was over j.a.p returned to the spot, and long after dark he sat upon the pile of wreckage, thinking long, long thoughts.

CHAPTER IX

The sc.r.a.ping of saw, the clang of hammer and the smell of fresh paint cla.s.sed Bloomtown as "Boomtown." The railroad had already peered into the northern environs of the town, cutting diagonally across Main street, some half-dozen blocks from the plot of ground that had been rechristened Court House Square. A substantial munic.i.p.al building took the place of the dingy old Town Hall, and the barns of the now almost defunct Bloomtown, Barton and Faber hack line had been cleared away to make room for a decent hotel. In the angle between the railroad tracks and Main street a small temporary station sheltered travelers. The half-moribund village had burst its swaddling bands and begun to expand. Everybody was wearing grins as a radiant garment.

As the summer traveled toward July, the headaches that had been so frequent the past winter merged into a feeling of utter exhaustion, and Ellis came down to the office but few days of each week. Flossy stopped j.a.p at the gate one noon hour.

"Ellis has something to tell you, j.a.ppie, and I want you to be very composed. Don't let yourself go." Her voice was full of pleading.

She turned quickly as Ellis appeared in the doorway. He walked out to meet them.

"Let us sit out under the trellis while Flossy finishes fixing dinner,"

he said, leading the way. "j.a.p, your birthday comes to-morrow, and I am going to ask you to accept a sacred trust that is a burden. You are twenty-one and, as they say, 'your own man.' I want to ask you to be _my man_. j.a.p, I am going away, how far G.o.d only knows. The doctor says that my lungs are all wrong, and life in the mountains may save me. My boy--for you have been my boy since you walked through my door, nine years ago--I want you to take charge of the office, and shoulder the support of Flossy and the little one if--if----" He caught the horror-stricken boy's hand. "j.a.p, I will never come back. I know it.

I have talked with my soul and it is well. Will you do it, j.a.p?"

j.a.p pressed Ellis's feverish hand between his strong young palms. He could not speak. His eyes were dry and his lips twitched.

"There," cautioned Ellis, "no heavy face before Flossy. G.o.d bless her!

she thinks that I will be well before the new office is done, and is making more splendid plans for the big opening! She is---- j.a.p, you dunce, grin about something!"

Flossy and the boy came dancing down the sun-flecked path and j.a.p swung the slender little fellow to his shoulder and began a mock race from Ellis.

As soon as dinner was over, a dinner that stuck in his throat for hours, he told Flossy that two men were rus.h.i.+ng Bill to desperation for their handbills. He hurried out by way of the alley. Flossy ran after him. "You forgot your hat, j.a.p," she cried breathlessly. He took the hat and started off silently.

"Wait a minute, j.a.p." Her voice was insistent. "You didn't put on a grave face with Ellis, did you? Oh, j.a.p"--the cry was from her heart--"he will never live to see the new office! He will never know of the realization of his dreams, the big town, the trains whirling through, and he looking down from his lofty window with a smile of superior joy. Oh, j.a.p, how often have we heard him tell about it! He doesn't know. He is full of hope. Only just before you came he was joking about the Star Spangled Banner he was going to wind around his brow when he dedicated the _Herald_ office. j.a.p, be true to his faith, for he will never open the door of that office. He will never help to get out the first paper."

She strangled and turned away. Then in brisk tones she added:

"Now, j.a.p, hurry along. Here comes Ellis to scold." And in the marvelous manner that is G.o.d-given to loving women, she forced a smile to her lips as she gave the youth a playful shove and ran to meet her husband.

A few days later they left. The town took a holiday, and with laughter and merrymaking it celebrated Ellis Hinton's first vacation. A water tank was in process of construction, at the upper end of a half-mile stretch of double track, and at the lower end of the siding, close to Main street, the imposing brick railroad station stood in potential grandeur, its bricks still separated by straw and its ample foundation giving promise of stability as it reposed in sacks of cement and piles of crushed stone. Something of this was incorporated in Ellis's farewell speech as he addressed his townspeople. When the train began to move his black head was still visible, as he returned quip for joke.

And Flossy was flitting from her lifelong friends as if no trouble clouded her brow.

Little J. W. was the feature of the going, and under the pretense of caring for his wants, their sleeper compartment had been piled with fruit and flowers by loving friends who had gone on to the nearest town to meet the train, so that the surprise should be the more complete.

Then, to the sound of the village band, Ellis left what he had always called "my town." j.a.p did not go to the station, and when Bill found the door of their improvised office locked, he turned silently away.

His heart was full, too.

The Widow Raymond had offered them a room for a printing office. The press occupied the room. j.a.p and Bill set the type in the woodshed and carried the galleys in. During the nine years of their a.s.sociation Bill had been the unsteady member of the team, consuming more effort in devising ways and means of escaping work than the work would have cost, and toiling with feverish penitence when he realized that he had wrought a hards.h.i.+p to j.a.p or Ellis. But now, inspired by the dimpled face of Rosy Raymond, he worked as he had never worked in his life.

Odd things began to happen. Bill insisted on doing all the proof-reading, a task he had hitherto detested. A bit of verse occasionally crept into the columns of the _Herald_. j.a.p did not detect this verse for several weeks. When he did, he descended upon Bill.

"Where in Heck did you filch that doggerel?"

"Who said it was doggerel?" demanded Bill.

"Lord love you," cried j.a.p, "what could any sane being call it? What did you get for publis.h.i.+ng it--advertising rates?"

"You're a fool!" snapped Bill. "You think that you're a criterion. I will have you know that lots of folks have complimented it."

j.a.p took up the offending sheet.

"'Thine eyes are blue, thine lips are red, thine locks are gold,'" he groaned. He looked at Bill. Just then the door opened and Rosy stepped into the room. A great light shone on j.a.p's understanding.

Her eyes were blue, her lips certainly red, and a fervid imagination could call her hair gold. He sighed pathetically.

"Bill, don't you think you could write it out and relieve the pressure on your heart, without endangering our prestige?"

Bill kicked at the mongrel dog that had its habitat under the press, and marched out indignantly.

"I'll be glad if I get him out of here single," mused j.a.p. "He has these spells as regular as the seasons change. Heretofore his prospects have never ent.i.tled him to consideration. This time it may be different."

Bill had been systematically chased from every front gate in town, behind which rosy-cheeked girls abode; but the disquieting conviction swooped down upon j.a.p that Barkis, in the shape of the Widow Raymond, might be more than "willin'" to hitch Bill to her sixteen-year-old daughter. And if Bill had not contracted a new variety of measles at the most opportune time, j.a.p's forebodings might have been realized.

Bill had the "catching" habit. No contagion in town ever escaped him, and this time he was so ill that he had to go to the country to recuperate.

The new stores opened, one by one, with much celebration. Owing to several unaccountable financial complications, the last of all the important buildings on Main street to be finished was the _Herald_ office. A cylinder press, second-handed, to be sure, but none the less an object of admiration, was installed, and fonts of clean, new type stood ready for work. There was a great, sunny front office on the main floor, and the ample s.p.a.ce behind it had been divided into composing room, press room and private office. On the second floor was a small job press, and here, at j.a.p's suggestion, the old Was.h.i.+ngton press was stored. The rooms were decorated with flags, and bunting was strung across the front of the office. Judge Bowers had personally attended to this.

"You're going to have a dandy paper," Tom Granger beamed, as he accompanied j.a.p on the final tour of inspection. "We'll all have to stop business to watch this cylinder press spill out the news."

Wat Harlow had run down from the Capital to congratulate the staff. At his suggestion the merchants had ordered flowers from the city, and great vases of roses and carnations, and decorative pieces in symbolic design, stood around in fragrant profusion. Every room of the office was filled with them.

The forms were ready for the printing of that first paper, and only awaited the conclusion of Wat's speech, to be placed upon the press, so that Bloomtown should receive the salutatory _Herald_. j.a.p turned to the a.s.semblage, waiting in eager curiosity to see the cylinder revolve.

"The paper will be printed on Ellis's press," he said briefly. "I don't want to be ungrateful for your kindness, but will you leave Bill and me alone to get out our first edition?"