Jap Herron Part 5

"Abraham Lincoln used colons and semicolons," said Ellis, shortly, "and I am setting his immortal speech. What am I going to do about it, my intelligent co-printer?"

Bill coughed violently as the wad of paper slipped down his throat.

"Try George Was.h.i.+ngton," he advised, "They didn't have so much trimmin's to their talk them days."

j.a.p shoved a chair against the door sill and flung the door ajar to cut off the blast of hot air that swept the office.

"Gee-whiz!" he complained, "I'm chokin' on the dust. However did they get 'Bloomtown' hitched on to this patch of dirt? There ain't a flower 'in a mile, 'ceptin' the half-dead sprigs the wimmin are acoaxin'

against their will."

"When I came here," said Ellis, "the old settlers told me that whenever I wanted information I should hunt up Kelly Jones. There he goes now.

Call him in."

But Kelly was coming anyway. He carried a mysterious basket and his sun-burned face was full of suppressed excitement.

"Wife allowed that you and j.a.p must be putty nigh starved," he chuckled, s.h.i.+fting the quid to his other cheek. "I reckon she knowed that j.a.p done the cookin' Wednesdays and Thursdays."

He lifted the clean white towel from the basket, disclosing a pound of yellow b.u.t.ter, a gla.s.s of jelly, a loaf of bread and two pies, fairly reeking aroma.

"Fu'st blackberries," a.s.serted Kelly. "I ain't had a pie myself yet, and wife forbid me to take a bite o' yourn."

"G.o.d bless the wife of our countryman, Kelly Jones. May her shade never grow less," said Ellis fervently, stowing the basket away. "If j.a.p and Bill stick all the matter on the hooks before noon, they may have pie. Otherwise the Editor of the _Herald_ exercises his prerogative and eats both pies."

"Kelly," asked j.a.p abruptly, "why did they call this patch of dust 'Bloomtown'? Did they ever have even peppergra.s.s growin' along its edges?"

Kelly settled himself comfortably in Ellis's chair and draped his long legs over the exchanges. Filling his mouth with Granger twist, he said:

"'Twa'n't because of the blooms. Fact is, it never was 'bloom' in the fu'st place. Old man Blome owned this track of land--his name was Jerusalem Blome. Folks used to say Jerusalem Blown. Purty nice story there is about this town and Barton, why neither of 'em has got a railroad, and why Barton is bigger in money and scarcer in folks."

Ellis put his stickful of type on the case resignedly. Bill and j.a.p deposited their weary frames on the doorstep. The hot wind blew in their faces, laden with dust. The smell of dried gra.s.s was odorous.

"Looks like it mout blow up a rain," said Kelly, sniffing approvingly.

"Well, Kelly," declared Ellis, "you have tied the wheels of this machine. Deliver the goods you promised. We are not interested in rain."

"Humph!" ruminated Kelly, "it was this-a-way: Old man Blome bought this track about the time that Luellen Barton moved to her plantation. It mout 'a' been sooner; I ain't sure. Barton--leastways, what is Barton now--belonged to old Simpson Barton. When he went south and married a rip-snortin' widow, he brought his wife and a pa.s.sel o' n.i.g.g.e.rs to live at the old home place. There hadn't never been no n.i.g.g.e.rs there, along of the fu'st Mis' Barton.

"When war broke out the n.i.g.g.e.rs run away, along of Jerusalem Blome, that got up a n.i.g.g.e.r regimint. After the war there was talk of a railroad. It would run right through the Blome farm and cross the Barton place crossways. My daddy was overseer for Mis' Barton. Simp didn't have nothin' to say about the runnin' of the place. I was a tyke, doin' errands for everybody, and I heerd a lot o' the railroad talk. Old Blome was sellin' his farm in town lots, gettin' ready for the boom--for who would 'a' thought that Mis' Barton would turn her back on such a proposition?

"You see, it was this-a-way: Mis' Luellen was allus speculatin' in n.i.g.g.e.rs, and a month before war broke, she had bought a load of Guinea n.i.g.g.e.rs--the kind that looks like they are awearin' bustles, you know.

Simp kinder smelt war, but, Lordee, Luellen wouldn't be dictated to!

And she went broke, flat as a flitter. All that was left was the thousand acres of Barton land.

"Railroad? No, siree! She heard about old man Blome's activity, and she had it in for Blome. She sat up and primped her lips when Pee-Dee Jones come in behalf of the railroad. That's how the Barton Joneses come to settle in this neck o' the woods. Pee-Dee Jones--no kin o'

mine--had a winnin' way, and he purty nigh got Mis' Luellen's name on the paper, when he let slip that he intended buildin' a town on her land. 'Do you think that I am agoin' to have a lot of blue-bellied Yankees in my very dooryard?' she yelled. 'You are mistaken.' And so she stuck.

"Afterwards she learned that Pee-Dee Jones had follered Grant. Whew!

She nigh busted with rage. Mis' Luellen allus said that she could smell a Yankee a mile, and as she didn't like the smell, she cropped the railroad boom. It went five mile north of her place, and missed Bloomtown twenty mile. That's why the two towns are just livin' along.

The folks that bought lots of old Blome tried to get another railroad to come their way. That was when the Wabash looked like it was headed for my farm; but I reckon that opportunities like that don't come but onct in a lifetime.

"I wonder that Mis' Luellen's spook don't howl around Barton every night, for Jones bought the big house after she died, and the fambly comes back there to live whenever their luck goes wrong. Pee-Dee's boy, Brons Jones, started a paper there, about the time that Hallam started the Bloomtown _Herald_. He sold out to a poor devil that's racin' to see if he can starve quicker'n Ellis. Brons ain't been around these parts, the last few years, but he owns a lot o' Barton property that he thinks 'll make good some day."

Kelly aimed a clear stream of tobacco juice at the dingy brown cuspidor, and made as if to settle himself for further narrative.

"j.a.p, Bill, get to work," commanded Ellis. "And, Kelly, much as I appreciate you and your excellent wife, I must dispense with your society. I need these boys."

As the farmer departed, grinning cheerfully, Tom Granger appeared at the door of the _Herald_ office. A conference of prominent citizens had been summoned to meet, early that afternoon, in the Granger and Harlow bank, a somewhat more pretentious building, separated from the _Herald_ office by a narrow alley; and during a lull in the morning's business Tom was serving himself in the capacity of errand boy. From his place on the front steps, he could watch for the possible advent of depositor or daylight robber, there being no rear door to the bank.

"You'll be on hand, Ellis," he reminded. "Couldn't have any kind of a meeting without the _Herald_, you know. We won't keep you long."

But the session was more important than the banker had antic.i.p.ated.

Judge Bowers had prepared a lengthy discourse, and others had opinions that needed ventilating. Once or twice, Ellis was irritated by shrieks of laughter that emanated from the office across the alley, usually in Bill's shrill treble. When the cause of the merriment had reached an exceptional climax, the Editor pounced upon his a.s.sistants, wearing the scowl of a thunder G.o.d. j.a.p and Bill got up, shamefacedly, as he demanded:

"What do you think I am conducting this plant for? A circus for horse-play?"

He kicked the cat loose from the box j.a.p had it hitched to. The two boys looked ruefully at their over-turned cart.

"There goes the h.e.l.l-box!" Bill screamed.

Ellis stared at him in transfixed wrath.

"Was that pi?" he demanded, looking down the hole in the floor into which most of the contents of the box had spilled.

Bill darted into the back room and sneaked swiftly out through the alley door. The office saw him no more that day. With such tools as were available, j.a.p set to work to undo the mischief he had wrought.

An hour later, he replaced the plank in the floor. The rescued type was piled in a dirty litter of refuse. Ellis leaned over it, attracted by a gleam that shone as not even new type could glitter.

"It's a ring," explained j.a.p, furtively. "I reckon you won't be so mad now. I can soak it when we get hungry. I soaked my ma's ring, lots of times."

"Why, you young reprobate!" exclaimed Ellis, "that ring is not yours, or mine. We will advertise it." He smiled in j.a.p's disappointed face.

"It looked like a beefsteak, didn't it, boy? Well, virtue is its own reward, and maybe the owner will pay for the ad."

But she did not, and yet the kick given to the inoffensive office cat had effects as far-reaching in the result to Bloomtown as did the kick of the famous Chicago cow, with this difference, that the effects were not disastrous. The brief ad in the _Herald_ brought Flossy Bowers from her home in Barton to claim a ring she had lost fifteen years before.

"The office used to belong to Pap's daddy," Bill explained to j.a.p, as Ellis and Miss Bowers stood chatting in the front door. "When Grandpap was lawyerin', he had this for his office, and Aunt Flossy lost her ring, scrubbin' the floor. I have heard tell that he made the wimmin folks curry the horses. They say he had a big funeral. I wonder--"

Bill spoke wistfully, "I wonder if I have any kinfolks on the man-side that love anybody but theirselves. Flossy didn't get to go off to school till her daddy died. She's been teaching up to Barton, since my pappy married this last time, and my stepmother don't like her, so she never comes home."

j.a.p and Bill noted that Ellis found frequent business in Barton, and despite the inhospitable atmosphere of the substantial Bowers home, across the little park from the _Herald_ office, Flossy came oftener than usual to her girlhood town. The autumn, the winter and the spring sped by. Ellis Hinton was too happy to scold, even when there was an excess of horse-play. In the gladsome June-tide the young girls of Bloomtown stripped their mothers' gardens to weave garlands for the little church, and Judge Bowers opened his heart and his house for the wedding reception.

Flossy had a dower of two thousand dollars, besides the cottage, a part of her father's patrimony, on one of the side streets, a ten-minute walk from the office. In her trunk were stowed away the yellow linens that should have served her, had a certain college friend proved faithful, and the wedding presents came near to doing the rest. This strange turn of the wheel of fortune landed j.a.p Herron in his first real home. Flossy could cook, and thank the kind fates, she brought something to cook with her. Flossy was a misnomer, for even in her salad days, she had never been the least bit "flossy," and when Ellis bestowed himself upon her she had well turned thirty.

The Judge made Ellis a present of the office, thereby relieving him of the haunting fear that he might, at some time, demand the rent. The paper put on a new dress, and the h.e.l.l-box was dumped full of the discarded, mutilated types that had so long given strabismus to the patient readers of the Bloomtown _Herald_.

CHAPTER IV

"To-morrow is j.a.p's birthday," announced Ellis, one noontide early in July. "j.a.p, you are a joy-spoiler. With the Fourth yet smoking in the air, we must be upset by your birthday."