The next morning when Henley arrived at the store, Cahews, who with a
face drawn long was standing at the front, pointed mutely at the lion's
cage. Henley looked and groaned. It bore a pasteboard placard, and the
words, in big, irregular capitals:
FOR SALE. APPLY TO DIXIE HART.
"She come in here yesterday evening after you'd gone," Cahews explained,
"and borrowed my marking-pot and brush. Then she had me get her the
pasteboard, and after she had painted the sign she took the nail-box and
hammer and went over there and tacked it up. A crowd of school-boys was
watching, and raised a laugh, but she come away without paying any
attention to them. I tried to get her to reason a little, and told her
the money was there in the drawer waiting for her to change her mind,
but she said she knowed exactly what she was about, and if I'd lie low I
might learn a trick or two in business methods."
"She's off--she's away off!" Henley sighed. "And I'm plumb sorry, for
she is, in many other ways, as quick as a steel trap and bright as a new
dollar."
One morning, two days later, as the storekeeper was at his desk in the
rear writing letters, his attention was called by a keen whistle from
Cahews, who stood in the front-door wildly signalling him to approach.
And going to the clerk, who was now on the front porch staring toward
the lion's cage, he saw that Seth Woods, the begrimed shoemaker, had
torn down the placard and stood looking into the cage.
"He's mad about it, I'll bet," was Henley's troubled comment. "I reckon
folks have been guying him. That railroad man said he consented to let
me use the lot. Maybe he lied to close the trade."
"Maybe he did," agreed Cahews; "but look! What do you make of that?"
A negro man with the shoemakers bench on his shoulder had turned the
corner and was headed for the cage. "Put it inside an' go back for the
rest," they heard Woods order.
Wonderingly, Henley strode across the street and reached the cage just
after the negro had put down the bench on the inside and was coming out
of the narrow doorway.
"What's the meaning of this?" Henley inquired of the shoemaker.
"Why," and a complacent smile broke through the grime on Woods's face,
"it means, Alf, that I'm at last my own landlord. I've been paying old
Welborne fifty dollars a year rent fer that little hole in a wall, away
back from the square, because I couldn't get enough ahead to build on
this lot or get any other shop. I think I've had a stroke of luck, and,
strange to say, it come through a woman. Yesterday evening Dixie Hart
come in my shop and axed me if I could straighten the heels of her shoes
while she set thar. I told her certainly, an' while I was at work we got
to talking first on one topic and then on another. She likes my wife an'
daughter, an' she said a good deal about 'em. She axed me if I had any
objections to lettin' this cage, which she said she had raked in from
you at a big bargain, to set on my lot till somebody come along and
bought it. I thought buyin' sech a thing was a powerful quar thing for a
young woman to do, but of course I didn't say so to her, for it wa'n't
any o' my business. Well, one thing fetched on another till she got to
lookin' about my shop while I was trimmin' the heel-taps, an' all at
once she wanted to know--if thar was no harm in axin'--what rent I was
payin'. I told 'er fifty dollars, an' she whistled kind o' keenlike an'
said: 'My gracious! an' got a vacant lot, too, right in the heart o' the
square.' I explained to her that I wasn't able to build a shop, an' was
afraid I never would be, gettin' old like I am an' so many to feed.
Then, Alf, what you think that gal said? As cool as a cucumber in a
spring branch, as she set thar wigglin' her toes in 'er stockin' feet,
she said: 'You'd better listen to me, an' I'll fix you so you won't have
_any_ rent to pay. That lion's cage, just at it stands, with the door
openin' on the sidewalk, would make the dandiest shoe-shop in seven
States. It's plenty wide and long; it is well-roofed with painted
sheet-iron, an' would be as tight in cold weather as a jar of preserves.
It faces every street that leads into the square, and you'd get twice as
much custom there as you do away back here next to this little pig-trail
alley.' By gum, what she said struck me like a bolt of lightnin'. I'd
examined the cage, as everybody else in town has, I reckon, an' I knowed
all about it, so I up an' axed 'er what she'd paid you for it, an' she
kind o' dodged my question.
"'Has that got anything to do with it?' she axed, an' I told 'er, I did,
that I heard you was offerin' it fer twenty-five dollars. That seemed to
set 'er studyin' fer a minute, an' then she said:
"'To tell you the truth, Mr. Woods, that _is_ all I had to pay, but I
got it, you mought say, at that figure by the very skin o' my teeth. In
a thoughtless moment Alf Henley said he'd take twenty-five, and,
knowing what it was railly worth, I yanked out the money on the spot and
laid it down. He's a gentleman'--she said--'Alf Henley is a plumb
gentleman, but he tried his level best to back down. Jim Cahews will
testify that I was actually obliged to leave the money on the counter
and walk out before he'd give in.' Is that so, Alf?"
"I am obliged to say it is, Seth," Henley answered, flushing. "Some'n
like that actually _did_ take place."
"I didn't think she'd fib about it," Woods went on, "and I finally axed
her what she'd take, an' she said nothin' less than fifty dollars cash
down would interest her, as she had a winter cloak to lay in, an' shoes
for three women, an' what not.
"I told her fifty looked purty steep, but she throwed herself back an'
laughed hearty. She said my rent in the shop fer one year alone would
pay it, and after that I'd be a free man. She said in the summer I could
prop up both these flap sides, to cut off the sun, an' the wind would
blow clean through. She said the very oddity of the thing would draw
trade, that I could have the picture of the lion painted out an' a big
boot an' shoe put in place of it. Oh, I can't begin to tell you all she
said. She'd 'a' been talkin' till now if I hadn't traded: Besides,
betwixt me'n you, she give me a scare; you see I was afraid the thing
would slip through my fingers, fer she set in to talkin' about havin' it
moved to t'other side o' the square and rentin' it fer a barber-shop,
an' she 'lowed, too, that it would be a bang-up thing to sell to a
convict-camp to keep chain-gang prisoners in.
"As a last resort, I axed her, I did, if she thought I ought to pay her
a clean hundred per cent. profit, an' she said: 'That ain't for you to
consider at all, Mr. Woods. You must jest let your mind rest on what
_you_ are goin' to get out of it. Alf Henley's made money out of it; I
must make my part, and you can do the same. It is the way business is
run all over the world. As soon as it becomes yours, somebody may come
along and pay you a hundred for it, though you'd be a fool to let it go
even at that. You are the one man in all the world that ought to hold on
to it.' She was right, Alf. I'm tickled over the change. I feel like a
new man. You ought to have seen old Welborne's face when I told 'im I
was goin' to vacate. He swore Dixie Hart was a meddlesome hussy, an'
that she had cheated the hindsight off of me. He said she owed him an'
was behind in her pay, an' that he was goin' to fetch 'er to taw."
Henley went back to his desk. There was a flush on his brow.
"Beat to a finish, and by a girl," he mused. "Here I've been thinking I
had nothing to learn about trading, and she picks up one of my remnants
and turns it over at a hundred per cent. profit as easy as knitting a
pair of socks. If I'd lived a hundred years I'd never have thought about
that shoe-shop."