Ellis scowled and kicked his stool absently with his heels.
"Will you explain where the colons and semicolons have emigrated to?"
he asked Bill, with suppressed wrath.
"We was short of quads, and I whittled 'em off."
Ellis glared at Bill's ingenuous face.
"And what, pray, did you whittle to take their place?"
"Never had no call to use 'em," muttered Bill, chewing up the item he
had just disposed of. "I can say all that I can think with commas and
periods."
"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 Washington," he advised, "They didn't have so much
trimmin's to their talk them days."
Jap 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 Jap must be putty nigh starved," he
chuckled, shifting the quid to his other cheek. "I reckon she knowed
that Jap done the cookin' Wednesdays and Thursdays."
He lifted the clean white towel from the basket, disclosing a pound of
yellow butter, a glass of jelly, a loaf of bread and two pies, fairly
reeking aroma.
"Fu'st blackberries," asserted Kelly. "I ain't had a pie myself yet,
and wife forbid me to take a bite o' yourn."
"God bless the wife of our countryman, Kelly Jones. May her shade
never grow less," said Ellis fervently, stowing the basket away. "If
Jap 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 Jap abruptly, "why did they call this patch of dust
'Bloomtown'? Did they ever have even peppergrass 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 Jap
deposited their weary frames on the doorstep. The hot wind blew in
their faces, laden with dust. The smell of dried grass 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 passel o' niggers to live
at the old home place. There hadn't never been no niggers there, along
of the fu'st Mis' Barton.
"When war broke out the niggers run away, along of Jerusalem Blome,
that got up a nigger 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
niggers, and a month before war broke, she had bought a load of Guinea
niggers--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.
"Jap, 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 anticipated.
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 assistants, wearing the
scowl of a thunder god. Jap 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 Jap had it hitched to. The two
boys looked ruefully at their over-turned cart.
"There goes the hell-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, Jap 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 Jap, 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 Jap'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 Jap, 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."
Jap 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 Jap 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 hell-box was dumped full of the
discarded, mutilated types that had so long given strabismus to the
patient readers of the Bloomtown _Herald_.