"Run out and get a box of sardines," ordered the boss of the Washington
press. "I've got a nickel. I can't let you starve. I lived three
months on them--look at me!"
Jap surveyed him apprehensively.
"I'd hate to be so thin," he complained, "and I don't like sardines nor
any fishes. My dad fed us them every day. Allus wanted to taste
doughnuts. Can I buy them?"
Ellis Hinton laughed shortly, and spun the nickel across the imposing
stone. Jap caught it deftly. An hour later he appeared for work,
smiling cheerfully.
"Why the shiner?" queried Ellis, indicating a badly swollen and rapidly
discoloring eye.
"Kid called me red-top," said Jap bluntly.
"Love o' gracious," Ellis exclaimed, "what is the shade?"
"It's red," quoth Jap, "but it ain't his business. If I am agoin' to
be a editor, nobody's goin' to get familiar with me."
This was Jap's philosophy, and in less than a week he had mixed with
every youth of fighting age in town. The office took on metropolitan
airs because of the rush of indignant parents who thronged its portals.
Ellis pacified some of the mothers, outtalked part of the fathers and
thrashed the remainder. After he had mussed the outer office with
"Judge" Bowers, and tipped the case over with the final effort that
threw him, Jap said, solemnly surveying the wreck:
"If I had a dad like you, I'd 'a' been the President some day."
Ellis gazed ruefully into the mess of pi, and kicked absently at the
hell-box.
"I'll work all night," cried Jap eagerly. "I'll clean it up."
"We'll have plenty of time," said Ellis gloomily. "We have to hit the
road, kid. Judge Bowers owns the place. He has promised to set us out
before morning."
But luck came with Jap. It was Friday again, and Bowers's wife
presented him with twins, his mother-in-law arrived, and his uncle
inherited a farm. There was only one way for the news to be
disseminated, and he came in with his truculent son and helped clean
up, so that the _Herald_ could be issued on time. More than that, he
made the boys shake hands, and concluded to put Bill to work in the
_Herald_ office. After he had puffed noisily out, Ellis looked
whimsically at Bill.
"Are you going to board yourself out of what I am able to pay you?" he
asked.
"Oh, I don't reckon Pappy cares about that," the boy said cheerfully.
"He just wants to keep me out of mischief, and he said that lookin' at
you was enough to sober a sot."
Months dragged by. Bill and Jap worked more or less harmoniously.
Once a day they fought; but it was fast becoming a mere function, kept
up just for form. Ellis was doing better. He had set up housekeeping,
since Jap came, in the back room of the little wooden structure that
faced the Public Square, and housewives sent them real food once in a
while.
Once Ellis feared that Jap was going to quit him for the Golden Shore.
It was on the occasion of Myrtilla Botts's wedding, when she baked the
cakes herself, for practice, and her mother thoughtfully sent most of
them to the Editor, to insure a big puff for Myrtilla. Ellis was
afraid; but Jap, with the enthusiasm and inexperience of youth, took a
chance. Bill was laid up with mumps, or the danger would have been
lessened. As it was, it took all the doctors in town to keep Jap alive
until they could uncurl him and straighten out his appendix, which
appeared to be cased in wedding cake. This experience gave Jap an
added distaste for the state of matrimony.
"My dad allus said to keep away from marryin'," he moaned. "But how'd
I know you'd ketch it from the eatin's?"
The subscription list grew apace. There was a load of section ties,
two bushel of turnips and six pumpkins paid in November. Bill and Jap
went hunting once a week, so the larder grew beyond sardines. Jap
acquired a hatred of turnips and pumpkins that was in after years
almost a mania. At Christmas, Kelly Jones brought in a barrel of
sorghum, "to sweeten 'em," he guffawed. Jap had grown to manhood
before he wholly forgave that pleasantry. It was a hard winter.
Everybody said so, and when Jap gazed at Ellis across the turnips and
sorghum of those weary months, he said he believed it.
"Shame on you," rebuked Ellis, gulping his turnips with haste. "Think
of the wretched people who would be glad to get this food."
"Do you know any of their addresses?" asked Jap abruptly. "Because I
can't imagine anybody happy on turnips and sorghum. I'd be willin' to
trade my wretched for theirn."
Kelly said that Jap would be fat as butter if he ate plenty of
molasses, and this helped at first; but when the grass came, he begged
Ellis to cook it for a change.
When George Thomas came in, one blustery March day, to say that if the
turnips were all gone, he would bring in some more, Ellis pied Judge
Bowers's speech on the duties of the Village Fathers to the alleys,
when he saw the malignant look that Jap cast upon the cheery farmer.
Once a week Bill and Jap drew straws to determine which one should fare
forth in quest of funds, and for the first time in his brief business
career, Jap was glad the depressing task had fallen to him. "Pi" was
likely to bring on an acute attack of mental indigestion, and the boy
had learned to dread Ellis Hinton's infrequent but illuminating flame
of wrath.
The catastrophe had been blotted out, the last stickful of type had
been set and Bill had gone home to supper when Jap, leg-weary and
discouraged, wandered into the office. Ellis looked up from the form
he was adjusting.
"How did you ever pick out this town?" the boy complained, turning the
result of his day's collection on the table.
Ellis turned from the bit of pine he was whittling, a makeshift
depressingly familiar to the country editor. He scanned the meager
assortment of coins with anxious eye. Jap's lower jaw dropped.
"I'll have to fire you if you haven't got enough to pay for the paper."
"Got enough for that," said Jap mournfully, "but not enough for meat."
"Didn't Loghman owe for his ad?" Ellis demanded. "Did you ask him for
it?"
"Says you owe him more 'n he's willin' for you to owe," Jap ventured.
Ellis sighed.
"Meat's not healthy this damp weather," he suggested. "Cook something
light."
"It'll be darned light," said Jap. "There's one tater."
"No bread?" asked Ellis.
"Give that scrap to the cat," Jap returned, "Doc Hall says she's done
eat all the mice in town and if we don't feed her she'll be eatin'
off'n the subscribers."
"Confound Doc Hall," stormed Ellis. "You take your orders from me.
That bread, stewed with potato, would have made a dandy dish." He
shook the form to settle it, and faced Jap.
"How did I come to pick this place?" he said slowly. "Well, Jap, it
was the dirtiest deal a boy ever got. I had a little money after my
father died. I wanted to invest it in a newspaper, somewhere in the
West, where the world was honest and young. I had served my
apprenticeship in a dingy, narrow little New England office, and I
thought my lifework was cut out for me. I had big dreams, Jap. I saw
myself a power in my town. With straw and mud I wanted to build a town
of brick and stone. Dreams, dreams, Jap, dreams. Some day you may
have them, too."
He let his lean form slowly down into a chair. Jap braced himself
against the table as the narrative continued:
"In Hartford I met Hallam, the man who started the Bloomtown _Herald_.
I heard his flattering version. I inspected his subscription list and
studied the columns of his paper, full of ads. I bought. The subs
were deadheads, the ads--gratuitous, for my undoing. It was indeed
straw and mud, and, lad, it has remained straw and mud." He leaned his
head on his hand for a moment.
"That was the year after you were born, Jap. I was only twenty-one.
For a year I was hopeful; then I dragged like a dead dog. You will be
surprised when I tell you what brought me to life again. I tell you
this, boy, so that you will never despise Opportunity, though she may
wear blue calico, as mine did.
"It was one dark, cold day. No human face had come inside the office
for a week. That was the period of my life when I learned how human a
cat can be. We were starving, the cat and me, with the advantage in
favor of the cat. She could eat vermin. I sat by the table, wondering
the quickest way to get out of it. Yes, Jap, the first and, God help
me, the only time that life was worthless. The door opened and a plump
woman dressed in blue calico, a sunbonnet pushed back from her smiling
face, entered."
To Jap, who listened with his heart in his throat, it seemed that Ellis
was quoting perhaps a page from the memoirs he had written for the
benefit of his townsmen. His deep, melodious voice fell into the
rhythmic cadence of a reader, as he continued:
"'Howdy, Mr. Editor,' she chirped. 'I've been keenin' for a long time
to come in to see you. I think you are aprintin' the finest paper I
ever seen. I brought you a mess of sassage and a passel of bones from
the killin'. It's so cold, they'll keep a spell. And here's a dollar
for next year's paper. I don't want to miss a number. I am areadin'
it over and over. Seems like you are agoin' to make a real town out of
Bloomtown,' and with a friendly pat on the arm, she was gone."
Ellis brushed the long hair from his brow, the strange modulation went
out of his voice and the fire returned to his brown eyes as he said:
"Jap, I got up from that table and fell on my knees, and right there I
determined that starvation nor cold nor any other enemy should rout me.
Jap, I am going to make Bloomtown a real town yet. My boy, that blue
calico lady was Mrs. Kelly Jones."