The station agent, in black calico sleeve-protectors and celluloid eyeshade, stretched the upper half of his body out the cubby-hole that served him for an office.

"Oh, you Gash!" he called. "Give my love to all the ladies."

The two groups on the platform waited, all expectant for the retort.

Instantly it sped back to them, above the clacking voice of the train:

"That's all you ever would give 'em, ain't it?"

Mr. Gip Dismukes, who kept the livery stable, slapped Mr. Gene Brothers, who drove the bus, a resounding slap on the back.

"Ain't he jest ez quick ez a flash?" he demanded of the company generally.

The station agent withdrew himself inside his sanctum, his sides heaving to his mirthful emotions. He had drawn a fire acknowledged to be deadly at any range, but he was satisfied. The laugh was worth the wound.

Through the favoured section traversed by the common carrier to whose care genius incarnate had just committed his precious person there are two kinds of towns--bus towns and non-bus towns. A bus town lies at an appreciable distance from the railroad, usually with a hill intervening, and a bus, which is painted yellow, plies between town and station. But a non-bus town is a town that has for its civic equator the tracks themselves. The station forms one angle of the public square; and, within plain sight and easy walking reach, the post office and at least two general stores stand; and handily near by is a one-story bank built of a stucco composition purporting to represent granite, thus signifying solidity and impregnability; and a two-story hotel, white, with green blinds, and porches running all the way across the front; also hitch rails; a livery stable; and a Masonic Hall.

Sw.a.n.go belonged to the former category. It was over the hill, a hot and dusty eighth of a mile away. So, having watched the departing four-five accommodation until it diminished to a smudgy dot where the V of the rails melted together and finally vanished, the a.s.sembled Sw.a.n.goans settled back in postures of ease to wait for the up train due at three-eight, but reported two hours and thirty minutes late. There would still be ample time after it came and went to get home for supper.

The contemptuous travelling man who once said that only three things ever happened in Sw.a.n.go--morning, afternoon and night--perpetrated a libel, for he wilfully omitted mention of three other daily events: the cannon-ball, tearing through without stopping in the early forenoon; the three-eight up; and the four-five down.

So they sat and waited; but a spirit of depression, almost of sadness, affected one and all. It was as though a beaming light had gone out of their lives. Ginger Marable, porter and runner of the Mansard House, voiced the common sentiment of both races as he lolled on a baggage truck in the sunshine, with his cap of authority, crowned by a lettered tin diadem, shoved far back upon his woolly skull.

"Dat Mistah Gashney Tuttle he sho is a quick ketcher," stated Ginger with a soft chuckle. "W'ite an' black--we suttinly will miss Mistah Tuttle twell he gits back home ag'in."

Borne away from his loyal subjects to the pulsing accompaniment of the iron horse's snorted breath, the subject of this commentary extended himself on his red plush seat and considered his fellow travellers with a view to honing his agile fancy on the whetstones of their duller mentalities. On the whole, they promised but poor sport. Immediately in front of him sat a bride and groom, readily recognisable at a glance for what they were--the bride in cream-coloured cashmere, with many ribbons; the groom in stiff black diagonals, with braided seams, and a white lawn tie. A red-faced man who looked as though he might be a deputy sheriff from somewhere slept uneasily one seat in the rear. He had his shoes off, revealing gray yarn socks. His mouth was ajar, and down in his throat he snored screechily, like a planing mill. The youngest member of a family group occupying two seats just across the aisle whimpered a desire. Its mother rummaged in a s...o...b..x containing, among other delicacies, hard-boiled eggs, salt and pepper mixed and enveloped in a paper squill, blueberry pie, leaking profusely, and watermelon-rind preserves, and found what she sought--the lower half of a fried chicken leg. Satisfied by this gift the infant ceased from fretful repining, sucking contentedly at the meat end; and between sucks hammered contentedly with the drumstick on the seat back and window ledge, leaving lardy smears there in the dust.

Cap'n Buck--captain by virtue of having a regular pa.s.senger run--came through the car, collecting tickets. At no time particularly long on temper, he was decidedly short of it to-day. He was fifteen minutes behind his schedule--no unusual thing--but the locomotive was misbehaving. Likewise a difference of opinion had arisen over the proper ident.i.ty of a holder of mileage in the smoker. He halted alongside Gash Tuttle, swaying on his legs to the roll and pitch of the car floor.

"Tickets?" he demanded crisply.

"Wee gates, Cap," answered the new pa.s.senger jovially. "How does your copperosity seem to sagashuate this evenin'?"

"Where goin'?" said Fluter, ignoring the pleasantry. "I'm in a hurry.

What station?"

"Well," countered the irrepressible one, "what stations have you got?"

Cap'n Buck Fluter's cold eye turned meaningly toward the bell cord, which dipped like a tired clothesline overhead, and he snapped two fingers peevishly.

"Son," he said almost softly, "don't monkey with me. This here ain't my day for foolin'!"

Favoured son of the high G.o.ds though he was, Gash Tuttle knew instantly now that this was indeed no day for fooling. Cap'n Buck was not a large man, but he had a way of growing to meet and match emergencies. He handled the Sunday excursions, which was the acid test of a trainman's grit. Coltish youths, alcoholically keened up or just naturally high spirited, who got on his train looking for trouble nearly always got off looking for a doctor. As regards persons wishful of stealing a ride, they never tried to travel with Cap'n Buck Fluter oftener than once.

Frequently, for a period of time measurable by days or weeks, they were in no fit state to be travelling with any one except a trained nurse.

Gash Tuttle quit his fooling. Without further ado--whatever an ado is--he surrendered his ticket, receiving in exchange a white slip with punchmarks in it, to wear in his hatband. Next came the train butcher bearing chewing gum, purple plums in paper cornucopias, examples of the light literature of the day, oranges which were overgreen, and bananas which were overripe, as is the way with a train butcher's oranges and bananas the continent over. In contrast with the conductor's dourness the train butcher's mood was congenially inclined to persiflage.

After an exchange of spirited repartee, at which the train butcher by an admiring shake of the head tacitly confessed himself worsted, our hero purchased a paper-backed work ent.i.tled, "The Jolly Old Drummer's Private Joke Book." This volume, according to the whispered confidences of the seller, contained tales of so sprightly a character that even in sealed covers it might be sent by mail only at the sender's peril; moreover, the wink which punctuated this disclosure was in itself a promise of the spicy entertainment to be derived from perusal thereof. The price at present was but fifty cents; later it would go up to a dollar a copy; this, then, was a special and extraordinary rate.

The train continued on its course--not hurriedly, but with reasonable steadfastness and singleness of purpose. After much the same fashion the sun went down. The bride repeatedly whisked cindery deposits off her cashmered lap; the large-faced man, being awakened by one of his own snores, put on his shoes and indulged in fine-cut tobacco, internally applied; but the youngest pa.s.senger now slept all curled up in a moist little bundle, showing an expanse of plump neck much mottled by heat-rash, and clutching in one greased and gritted fist the denuded shank-bone of a chicken with a frieze of gnawed tendons adhering to its larger joint.

At intervals the train stopped at small way stations, bus or non-bus in character as the case might be, to let somebody off or somebody on.

Cap'n Buck now made his trips carrying his lantern--the ornate nickel-plated one that had been awarded to him in the voting contest for the most popular trainman at the annual fair and bazaar of True Blue Lodge of the Junior Order of American Mechanics. It had his proper initials--J. J. F.--chased on its gla.s.s chimney in old English script, very curlicue and ornamental. He carried it in the crook of his left elbow with the handle round his biceps; and when he reached the end of his run he would extinguish its flame, not by blowing it out but by a quick, short, expert jerk of his arm. This is a trick all conductors seek to acquire; some of them succeed.

Twilight, the stage manager of night, had stolen insidiously on the scene, shortening up the backgrounds and blurring the perspectives; and the princ.i.p.al character of this tale, straining his eyes over the fine print, had reached the next to the last page of "The Jolly Old Drummer's Private Joke Book" and was beginning to wonder why the postal authorities should be so finicky in such matters and in a dim way to wish he had his fifty cents back, when with a glad shriek of relief the locomotive, having b.u.mped over a succession of yard switches, drew up under a long open shed alongside a dumpy brick structure. To avoid any possible misunderstanding this building was labelled Union Depot in large letters and at both ends.

Being the terminus of the division, it was the train's destination and the destination of Mr. Tuttle. He possessed himself of an imitation leather handbag and descended on solid earth with the a.s.sured manner of a seasoned and experienced traveller. Doubtless because of the flurry created by the train's arrival and the bustling about of other arrivals his advent created no visible stir among the crowd at the terminal. At least he noticed none. Still, these people had no way of knowing who he was.

In order to get the Union Depot closer to the railroad it had been necessary to place it some distance away from the heart of things; even so, metropolitan evidences abounded. A Belt Line trolley car stood stationary, awaiting pa.s.sengers; a vociferous row of negro hackmen were kept in their proper places by a uniformed policeman; and on the horizon to the westward a yellow radiance glowed above an intervening comb of spires and chimneys, showing where the inhabitants of the third largest second-cla.s.s city in the state made merry at carnival and street fair, to celebrate the dedication and opening of their new Great White Way--a Great White Way seven blocks long and spangled at sixty-foot intervals with arc lights disposed in pairs on ornamental iron standards. Hence radiance.

Turning westward, therefore, Mr. Tuttle found himself looking along a circ.u.mscribed vista of one-story buildings with two-story fronts--that is to say, each wooden front wall extended up ten or fifteen feet above the peak of the sloping roof behind it, so that, viewed full-on, the building would have the appearance of being a floor taller than it really was. To add to the pleasing illusion certain of these superstructures had windows painted elaborately on their slab surfaces; but to one seeking a profile view the false work betrayed a razor-like thinness, as patently flat and artificial as stage scenery.

Travellers from the Eastern seaboard have been known to gibe at this transparent artifice. Even New York flat dwellers, coming direct from apartment houses which are all marble foyers and gold-leaf elevator grilles below and all dark cubby-holes and toy kitchens above, have been known to gibe; which fact is here set forth merely to prove that a sense of humour depends largely on the point of view.

To our Mr. Tuttle such deceits were but a part of the ordered architectural plan of things, and they moved him not. What did interest him was to note that the nearmost of these bogusly exalted buildings displayed, above swinging twin doors, a cl.u.s.ter of lights and a sign testifying that this was the First Chance Saloon. Without looking he sensed that the reverse of that Ja.n.u.s-faced sign would advertise this same establishment as being the Last Chance. He did not know about Ja.n.u.s, but he did know about saloons that are handily adjacent to union depots. Moreover, an inner consciousness advised him that after a dry sixty-mile trip he thirsted amain. He took up his luggage and crossed the road, and entered through the knee-high swinging doors.

There was a bar and a bar mirror behind it. The bar was decorated at intervals with rectangles of fly paper, on the sticky surfaces of which great numbers of flies were gummed fast in a perished or perishing state; but before they became martyrs to the fad of sanitation these victims had left their footprints thickly on the mirror and on the fringes of coloured tissue paper that dangled from the ceiling. In a front corner, against a window, was a lunch counter, flanked on one side by stools and serving as a barricade for an oil stove and shelves of cove oysters in cans, and hams and cheeses for slicing, and vinegar cruets and pepper casters and salt cellars crusted with the saline deposits of the years. A solitary patron was lounging against the bar in earnest conversation with the barkeeper; but the presiding official of the food-purveying department must have been absent on business or pleasure, for of him there was no sign.

Gash Tuttle ordered a beer. The barkeeper filled a tall flagon with brew drawn from the wood, wiped the clinging froth from its brim with a spatulate tool of whittled cedar, and placed the drink before the newcomer, who paid for it out of a silver dollar. Even as Mr. Tuttle scooped in his change and buried the lower part of his face in the circ.u.mference of the schooner he became aware that the other customer had drawn nearer and was idly rattling a worn leather cup, within which dice rapped against the sides like little bony ghosts uneasy to escape from their cabinet at a seance.

The manipulator of the dice held a palm cupped over the mouth of the cup to prevent their escape. He addressed the barkeeper:

"Flem," he said, "you're such a wisenheimer, I'll make you a proposition: I'll shake three of these here dice out, and no matter whut they roll I'll betcha I kin tell without lookin' whut the tops and bottoms will come to--whut the spots'll add up to."

The other desisted from rinsing gla.s.sware in a pail beneath the bar.

"Which is that?" he inquired sceptically. "You kin tell beforehand whut the top and bottom spots'll add up?"

"Ary time and every time!"

"And let me roll 'em myself?"

"And let you roll 'em yourself--let anybody roll 'em. I don't need to touch 'em, even."

"How much'll you risk that you kin do that, Fox?" Roused greed was in the speaker's tone.

"Oh, make it fur the drinks," said Fox--"jest fur the drinks. I ain't aimin' to take your money away frum you. I got all the money I need."

For the first time he seemed to become aware of a third party and he turned and let a friendly hand fall on the stranger's shoulder. "Tell you whut, Flem, we'll make it drinks fur this gent too. Come on, brother," he added; "you're in on this. It's my party if I lose, which I won't, and ole Flem's party if he loses, which he sh.o.r.e will."

It was the warmth of his manner as much as the generosity of his invitation that charmed Mr. Tuttle. The very smile of this man Fox invited friendship; for it was a broad smile, rich in proteids and b.u.t.terfats. Likewise his personality was as attractively cordial as his attire was striking and opulent.

"'Slide or slip, let 'er rip!'" said Mr. Tuttle, quoting the poetic words of a philosopher of an earlier day.

"That's the talk!" said Fox genially. He pushed the dice box across the bar. "Go to it, bo! Roll them bones! The figure is twenty-one!"

From the five cubes in the cup the barkeeper eliminated two. He agitated the receptacle violently and then flirted out the three survivors on the wood. They jostled and crocked against one another, rolled over and stopped. Their uppermost faces showed an ace, a six and a five.

"Twelve!" said Flem.