"TALKY" DEXTER, INDEED!
The moments of suspense were hard to bear. There was always a
fluttering at Janice's heart when she received a letter from her
father. She always dreamed of him as a mariner skirting the coasts of
Uncertainty. There was no telling, as Aunt 'Mira often said, what was
going to happen to Broxton Day next.
First of all, on this occasion, the young girl saw that the most
important enclosure was the usual fat letter addressed to her in
daddy's hand. With it was a thin, oblong card, on which, in minute and
very exact script, was written this flowery note:
"With respect I, whom you know not, venture to address you humbly, and
in view of the situation of your honorable father, the Señor B Day, beg
to make known to you that the military authorities now in power in this
district have refused him the privilege of sending or receiving mail.
Yet, fear not, sweet Señorita; while the undersigned retains the boon
of breath and the power of brain and arm, thy letters, if addressed in
my care, shall reach none but thy father's eye, and his to thee shall
be safely consigned to the government mails beyond the Rio Grande.
"Faithfully thine,
"JUAN DICAMPA."
Who the writer of this peculiar communication was, Janice had no means
of knowing. In the letter from her father which she immediately
opened, there was no mention of Juan Dicampa.
Mr. Day did say, however, that he seemed to have incurred the
particular enmity of the Zapatist chief then at the head of the
district because he was not prepared to bribe him personally and engage
his ragged and barefoot soldiery to work in the mine.
He did not say that his own situation was at all changed. Rather, he
joked about the half-breeds and the pure-blood Yaquis then in power
about the mine. Either Mr. Broxton Day had become careless because of
continued peril, or he really considered these Indians less to be
feared than the brigands who had previously overrun this part of
Chihuahua.
However, it was good to hear from daddy and to know that--up to the
time the letter was written, at least--he was all right. She went down
to supper with some cheerfulness, and took the letter to read aloud, by
snatches, during the meal.
A letter from Mexico was always an event in the Day household. Marty
was openly desirous of emulating "Uncle Brocky" and getting out of
Polktown--no matter where or how. Aunt 'Mira was inclined to wonder
how the ladies of Mexico dressed and deported themselves. Uncle Jason
observed:
"I've allus maintained that Broxton Day is a stubborn and foolish
feller. Why! see the strain he's been under these years since he went
down to that forsaken country. An' what for?"
"To make a fortune, Dad," interposed Marty. "Hi tunket! Wisht I was
in his shoes."
"Money ain't ev'rything," said Uncle Jason, succinctly.
"Well, it's a hull lot," proclaimed the son.
"I reckon that's so, Jason," Aunt Almira agreed. "It's his money
makin' that leaves Janice so comfterble here. And her automobile----"
"Oh, shucks! Is money wuth life?" demanded Mr. Day. "What good will
money be to him if he's stood up against one o' them dough walls and
shot at by a lot of slantindicular-eyed heathen?"
"Hoo!" shouted Marty. "The Mexicans ain't slant-eyed like Chinamen and
Japs."
"And they ain't heathen," added Aunt Almira. "They don't bow down to
figgers of wood and stone."
"Besides, Uncle," put in Janice, softly, and with a smile, "it is
_adobe_ not _dough_ they build their houses of."
"Huh!" snorted Uncle Jason. "Don't keer a continental. He's one
foolish man. He'd better throw up the whole business, come back here
to Polktown, and I'll let him have a piece of the old farm to till."
"Oh! that would be lovely, Uncle Jason!" cried Janice, clasping her
hands. "If he only _could_ retire to dear Polktown for the rest of his
life and we could live together in peace."
"Hi tunket!" exclaimed Marty, pushing back his chair from the supper
table just as the outer door opened. "He kin have _my_ share of the
old farm," for Marty had taken a mighty dislike to farming and had long
before this stated his desire to be a civil engineer.
"At it ag'in, air ye, Marty?" drawled a voice from the doorway. "If
repetition of what ye want makes detarmination, Mart, then you air the
most detarmined man since Lot's wife--and she was a woman, er-haw! haw!
haw!"
"Come in, Walky," said Uncle Jason, greeting the broad and ruddy face
of his neighbor with a brisk nod.
"Set up and have a bite," was Aunt 'Mira's hospitable addition.
"No, no! I had a snack down to the tavern, Marthy's gone to see her
folks terday and I didn't 'spect no supper to hum. I'm what ye call a
grass-widderer. Haw! haw! haw!" explained the local expressman.
Walky's voice seemed louder than usual, his face was more beaming, and
he was more prone to laugh at his own jokes. Janice and Marty
exchanged glances as the expressman came in and took a chair that
creaked under his weight. The girl, remembering what her cousin had
said about the visitor, wondered if it were possible that Walky had
been drinking and now showed the effects of it.
It was true, as Janice had once said--the expressman should have been
named "Talkworthy" rather than "Walkworthy" Dexter. To-night he seemed
much more talkative than usual.
"What were all you younkers out o' school so early for, Marty?" he
asked. "Ain't been an eperdemic o' smallpox broke out, has there?"
"Teachers' meeting," said Marty. "The Superintendent of Schools came
over and they say we're going to have fortnightly lectures on Friday
afternoons--mebbe illustrated ones. Crackey! it don't matter what they
have," declared this careless boy, "as long as 'tain't lessons."
"Lectures?" repeated Walky. "Do tell! What sort of lectures?"
"I heard Mr. Haley say the first one would proberbly be illustrated by
a collection of rare coins some rich feller's lent the State School
Board. He says the coins are worth thousands of dollars."
"Lectures on coins?" cackled Walky. "I could give ye a lecture on
ev'ry dollar me and Josephus ever airned! Haw! haw! haw!"
Walky rolled in his chair in delight at his own wit. Uncle Jason was
watching him with some curiosity as he filled and lit his pipe.
"Walky," he drawled, "what was the very hardest dollar you ever airned?
It strikes me that you allus have picked the softest jobs, arter all."
"Me? Soft jobs?" demanded Walkworthy, with some indignation. "Ye
oughter try liftin' some o' them drummers' sample-cases that I hatter
wrastle with. Wal!" Then his face began to broaden and his eyes to
twinkle. "Arter all, it was a soft job that I airned my hardest dollar
by, for a fac'."
"Let's have it, Walky," urged Marty. "Get it out of your system.
You'll feel better for it."
"Why, ter tell the truth," grinned Walky, "it was a soft job, for I
carried five pounds of feathers in a bolster twelve miles to old Miz'
Kittridge one Winter day when I was a boy. I got a dollar for it and
come as nigh bein' froze ter death as ever a boy did and save his
bacon."
"Do tell us about it, Walky," said Janice, who was wiping the supper
dishes for her aunt.
"I should say it was a soft job--five pounds of feathers!" burst out
Marty.
"How fur did you haf to travel, Walky?" asked Aunt 'Mira.
"Twelve mile over the snow and ice, me without snowshoes and it thirty
below zero. Yes, sir!" went on Walky, beginning to stuff the tobacco
into his own pipe from Mr. Day's proffered sack. "That was some job!
Miz Bob Kittridge, the old lady's darter-in-law, give me the dollar
_and_ the job; and I done it.
"The old lady lived over behind this here very mountain, all alone on
the Kittridge farm. The tracks was jest natcherly blowed over and hid
under more snow than ye ever see in a Winter nowadays. I believe there
was five foot on a level in the woods.
"There'd been a rain; then she'd froze up ag'in," pursued Walky. "It
put a crust on the snow, but I had no idee it had made the ice rotten.
And with Mr. Mercury creepin' down to thirty below--jefers-pelters!
I'd no idee Mink Creek had open air-holes in it. I ain't never
understood it to this day.
"Wal, sir! ye know where Mink Creek crosses the road to Kittridge's,
Jason?"
Mr. Day nodded. "I know the place, Walky," he agreed.
"That's where it happened," said Walky Dexter, nodding his head many
times. "I was crossin' the stream, thinkin' nothin' could happen, and
'twas jest at sunup. I'd come six mile, and was jest ha'f way to the
farm. I kerried that piller-case over my shoulder, and slung from the
other shoulder was a gun, and I had a hatchet in my belt.
"Jefers-pelters! All of a suddint I slumped down, right through the
snow-crust, and douced up ter my middle inter the coldest water I ever
felt I did, for a fac'!
"I sprung out o' that right pert, ye kin believe; and then the next
step I went down ker-chug! ag'in--this time up ter my armpits."
"Crackey!" exclaimed Marty. "That was some slip. What did you do?"
"I got out o' that hole purty careful, now I tell ye; but I left my cap
floatin' on the open pool o' water," the expressman said. "Why, I was
a cake of ice in two minutes--and six miles from anywhere, whichever
way I turned."
"Oh, Walky!" ejaculated Janice, interested. "What ever did you do?"
"Wal, I had either to keep on or go back. Didn't much matter which.
And in them days I hated ter gin up when I'd started a thing. But I
had ter git that cap first of all. I couldn't afford ter lose it
nohow. And another thing, I'd a froze my ears if I hadn't got it.
"So I goes back to the bank of the crick and cut me a pole. Then I
fished out the cap, wrung it out as good as I could, and clapped it on
my head. Before I'd clumb the crick bank ag'in that cap was as stiff
as one o' them tin helmets ye read about them knights wearin' in the
middle ages--er-haw! haw! haw!
"I had ter laig it then, believe me!" pursued the expressman. "Was
cased in ice right from my head ter my heels. Could git erlong jest
erbout as graceful as one of these here cigar-store Injuns--er-haw!
haw! haw!
"I dunno how I made it ter Ma'am Kittridge's--but I done it! The old
lady seen the plight I was in, and she made me sit down by the kitchen
fire just like I was. Wouldn't let me take off a thing.
"She het up some kinder hot tea--like ter burnt all the skin off my
tongue and throat, I swow!" pursued Walky. "Must ha' drunk two quarts
of it, an' gradually it begun ter thaw me out from the inside. That's
how I saved my feet--sure's you air born!
"When I come inter her kitchen I clumped in with feet's big as an
elephant's an' no more feelin' in them than as though they'd been boxes
and not feet. If I'd peeled off that ice and them boots, the feet
would ha' come with 'em. But the old lady knowed what ter do, for a
fac'.
"Hardest dollar ever I airned," repeated Walky, shaking his head, "and
jest carryin' a mess of goose feathers----
"Hullo! who's this here comin' aboard?"
Janice had run to answer a knock at the side door. Aunt 'Mira came
more slowly with the sitting room lamp which she had lighted.
"Well, Janice Day! Air ye all deef here?" exclaimed a high and rather
querulous voice.
"Do come in, Mrs. Scattergood," cried the girl.
"I declare, Miz Scattergood," said Aunt 'Mira, with interest, "you here
at this time o' night? I am glad to see ye."
"Guess ye air some surprised," said the snappy, birdlike old woman whom
Janice ushered into the sitting room. "I only got back from Skunk's
Holler, where I been visitin', this very day. And what d'ye s'pose I
found when I went into Hopewell Drugg's?"
"Goodness!" said Aunt 'Mira. "They ain't none o' them sick, be they?"
"Sick enough, I guess," exclaimed Mrs. Scattergood, nodding her head
vigorously: "Leastways, 'Rill oughter be. I told her so! I was
faithful in season, and outer season, warnin' her what would happen if
she married that Drugg."
"Oh, Mrs. Scattergood! What has happened?" cried Janice, earnestly.
"What's happened to Hopewell?" added Aunt 'Mira.
"Enough, I should say! He's out carousin' with that fiddle of
his'n--down ter Lem Parraday's tavern this very night with some wild
gang of fellers, and my 'Rill hum with that child o' his'n. And what
d'ye think?" demanded Mrs. Scattergood, still excitedly. "What d'ye
think's happened ter that Lottie Drugg?"
"Oh, my, Mrs. Scattergood! What _has_ happened to poor little Lottie?"
Janice cried.
"Why," said 'Rill Drugg's mother, lowering her voice a little and
moderating her asperity. "The poor little thing's goin' blind again, I
do believe!"