THE GOLD COIN
The campaign against liquor selling in Polktown really had been opened
on that Monday morning when Janice and Frank Bowman conferred together
near the scene of the young engineer's activities for the railroad.
The determination of two wide-awake young people to _do something_ was
the beginning of activities.
Not only was the time ripe, but popular feeling was already stirred in
the matter. The thoughtful people of Polktown were becoming
dissatisfied with the experiment. Those who had considered it of small
moment in the beginning were learning differently. If Polktown was to
be "boomed" through such disgraceful means as the sale of intoxicants
at the only hotel, these people with suddenly awakened consciences
would rather see the town lie fallow for a while longer.
The gossip regarding Hopewell Drugg's supposed fall from sobriety was
both untrue and unkind. That the open bar at Lem Parraday's was a real
and imminent peril to Polktown, however, was a fact now undisputed by
the better citizens.
Janice had sounded Elder Concannon on that very Monday when she had
brought him home from the Trimmins place. The old gentleman, although
conservative to a fault where money was concerned--his money, or
anybody's--agreed that one or two men should not be allowed to benefit
at the moral expense of their fellow townsmen.
That the liquor selling was causing a festering sore in the community
of Polktown could not be gainsaid. Sim Howell and two other boys in
their early teens had somehow obtained liquor, and had been picked up
in a frightful condition on the public street by Constable Poley Cantor.
The boys were made very ill by the quantity of liquor they had drunk,
and although they denied that they had bought the stuff at the hotel,
it was soon learned that the supply of spirits the boys had got hold
of, came from Lem Parraday's bar.
One of the town topers had purchased the half-gallon bottle and had hid
it in a barn, fearing to take it home. The boys had found it and dared
each other to taste the stuff.
"It's purty bad stuff 'at Lem sells, I allow," observed Walky Dexter.
"No wonder it settled them boys. It's got a 'kick' to it wuss'n
Josephus had that time the swarm of bees lit on him."
The town was ablaze with the story of the boys' escapade on Wednesday
afternoon when Janice came back from Middletown. She stopped at
Hopewell Drugg's store, which was a rendezvous for the male gossips of
the town, and Walky was holding forth upon the subject uppermost in the
public mind:
"Them consarned lettle skeezicks--I'd ha' trounced the hull on 'em if
they'd been mine."
"How would you have felt, Mr. Dexter, if they really were yours?" asked
Janice, who had been talking to 'Rill and Nelson Haley. "Suppose Sim
Howell were your boy? How would you feel to know that, at his age, he
had been intoxicated?"
"Jefers-pelters!" grunted Walky. "I reckon I wouldn't git
pigeon-breasted with pride over it--nossir!"
"Then don't make fun," admonished the girl, severely. "It is an
awful, _awful_ thing that the boys of Polktown can even get hold of
such stuff to make them so ill."
"That is right, Miss Janice," Hopewell said, busy with a customer.
"What else, Mrs. Massey?"
"That's all to-day, Hopewell. I hate to give you so big a bill, but
that's all I've got," said the druggist's wife, as she handed the
store-keeper a twenty-dollar gold certificate.
"He, he!" chuckled Walky, "Guess Massey wants all the change in town in
his own till, heh?"
"That is all right, Mrs. Massey," said Hopewell, in his gentle way. "I
can change it. Have to give you a gold piece--there."
"What's going to be done about this liquor selling, anyway?" demanded
Nelson Haley, in a much more serious mood, it would seem, than usual.
"I think Janice has the right of it--although I did not think so at
first. 'Live and let live,' is a good motto; but it is foolish to let
a mad dog live in a community. Lem Parraday's bar is certainly doing a
lot of harm to innocent people."
Janice clapped her hands softly, and her eyes shone. The school
teacher went on with increased warmth:
"Polktown is really being vastly injured by the liquor selling. To
think of those boys becoming intoxicated--one of them of my school,
too----"
The young man halted suddenly in this speech. In his earnestness he
had forgotten that it was his school no longer.
"It is a disgraceful state of affairs," 'Rill hastened to say, kindly
covering Nelson's momentary confusion.
But Janice beamed at the young man. "Oh, Nelson! I am delighted to
hear you speak so. We are going to hold a temperance meeting--Mr.
Middler and I have talked it over. And I have obtained Elder
Concannon's promise to be one of those on the platform. Polktown must
be waked up----"
"What! _Again_? Haw! haw! haw!" burst out Walky. "Jefers-pelters,
Janice Day! You've abeout give Polktown insomnia already! I sh'd say
our eyes was purty well opened----"
"_Yours_ are not, old fellow," said Nelson, good-naturedly, but with
marked earnestness, too. "You're patronizing the barroom side of the
hotel altogether more than is good for you, and if you don't know it
yourself, Walky, I feel myself enough your friend to tell you so."
"Nonsense! nonsense!" returned the expressman, reddening a little, yet
man enough to accept personal criticism when he was so prone to
criticizing other people. "What leetle I drink ain't never goin' ter
hurt me."
"Nor anybody else?" asked Janice, softly, for she liked Walky and was
sorry to see him go wrong. "How about your example, Walky?"
"Shucks! Don't talk ter me abeout 'example.' That's allus the excuse
of the weak-headed. If my example was goin' ter hurt the boys, ev'ry
one o' them would wanter be th' town expressman! Haw! haw! haw! I
ain't never seen none o' them tumblin' over each other fer th' chance't
ter cut me out on my job. An' 'cause I chaw terbaccer, is ev'ry
white-headed kid in town goin' ter take up chawin' as a habit?
"Jefers-pelters! I 'low if I had a boy o' m' own mebbe I'd be a lettle
keerful how I used either licker, or terbaccer. But I hain't. I got
only one child, an' she's a female. I reckon I ain't gotter worry
about little Matildy bein' inflooenced either by her daddy's chawin',
or his takin' a snifter of licker on a cold day--I snum!"
"Unanswerable logic, Walky," said Nelson, with some scorn. "I've used
the same myself. And it serves all right if one is utterly selfish. I
thought _that_ out after Janice, here, opened my eyes."
"You show me how my takin' a drink 'casionally hurts anybody or
anything else, an', jefers-pelters! I'll stop it mighty quick!"
exclaimed the expressman, with some heat.
"I shall hold you to that, Walky," said Janice, quickly, interfering
before there should be any further sharp discussion.
"And," muttered Nelson, "she's as good as got you, Walky--she has that!"
At the moment the door opened with a bang, and Mr. Massey plunged in.
He was without a hat and wore the linen apron he always put on when he
was compounding prescriptions in the back room of his shop. In his
excitement his gray hair was ruffled up more like a cockatoo's topknot
than usual, and his eyes seemed fairly to spark.
"Hopewell Drugg!" he exclaimed, spying the storekeeper. "Was my wife
just in here?"
"Hul-_lo_!" ejaculated Walky Dexter. "Hopewell hasn't been sellin' her
Paris green for buckwheat flour, has he? That would kinder be in your
line, wouldn't it, Massey?"
But the druggist paid the town humorist no attention. He hurried to
the counter and leaned across it, asking his question for a second time.
"Why, yes, she was here, Mr. Massey," said Hopewell, puzzled.
"She changed a bill with you, didn't she?"
"Jefers-pelters! was it counterfeit?" put in Walky, drawing nearer.
"A twenty dollar bill--yes, sir," said the storekeeper.
"Did you give her a gold piece--a ten dollar gold piece--in the
change?" shot in Massey, his voice shaking.
"Why--yes."
"Is this it?" and the druggist slapped a gold coin down on the counter
between them.
Hopewell picked up the coin, turned it over in his hand, holding it
close to his near-sighted eyes. Nothing could ever hurry Hopewell
Drugg in speech.
"Why--yes," he said again. "I guess so."
"But look at the date, man!" shouted Massey. "Don't you see the date
on it?"
Amazed, Drugg repeated the date aloud, reading it carefully from the
coin. "Why, yes, that's the date, sir," said the storekeeper.
"Don't ye know that's one of the rarest issues of ten dollar coins in
existence? Somethin' happened to the die: they only issued a few,"
Massey stammered. "Where'd you git it, Hopewell?"
"Why--why--Is it valuable?" asked Hopewell. "A rare coin, you say?"
"Rare!" shouted Massey. "Yes, I tell ye! It's rare. There ain't but
a few in existence. Mr. Hobart told me when he brought them coins over
here that night. And he pointed one of them out to me in that
collection. Where did you get this one, Hopewell--where'd you get it,
I say?"
And on completing the demand he turned sharply and stared with his
blinking, red eyes directly at Nelson Haley.