“Know of any ladders in town?” Catty asked, after a while.
“Fire company’s got some,” says I. “New hook-and-ladder was bought this
spring.” Catty thought it over awhile. “Don’t b’lieve we could borrow
them,” says he. “Them fire companies is p’tic’lar about lendin’ things.
Still, if we can’t git ’em anywheres else, we’ll try.”
When I got to know him better I saw that he was perfectly serious about
it, too. If he knew there was a thing he wanted, he figured there must
be some way to get it. He told me once that a fellow could get anything
if he just sat down and _thought_ long enough. “I’ll bet,” says he,
“that you could get _anything_ just by asking for it, if you could think
of exactly the right way to ask.”
Maybe that was so. I wish I could believe it and learn how to do it.
There’s a heap of things that I want bad and haven’t any chance ever to
get unless I do get ’em by asking right.
“Who are the painters here?” says he. “Sands Jones is one and Darkie
Patt is the other. Patt’s a darky,” says I, “and they don’t even speak.
Mad at each other. Always was and always will be, I guess.”
As we were going along we met Banty Gage and Skoodles Gordon. Skoodles
hollered to me to come on, that they were going up to the dam fishing.
He said there was a hole washed out behind the spiles where a fellow
could catch rookies as fast as he dropped in his line.
“How about it?” says I to Catty, and he looked like he was pretty
interested.
“Wait a minute,” I yelled to Banty, “till I see if Catty wants to come.”
“Needn’t wait on our account,” says Banty. “If he comes I can’t. Ma says
so, and I don’t want to, neither. I hain’t goin’ to have folks say I’m
always runnin’ around with tramps and sich.”
Catty didn’t say a word, but there was a line all the way around his
mouth that was white as white, and he looked kind of stiff like he was
frozen.
“Me, too,” says Skoodles. “Come on, Wee—wee. You hain’t goin’ to give us
the go-by for no tramp, be you?”
It made me mad.
“Come on,” says I to Catty. “Let’s knock some manners into ’em. A good
lickin’s goin’ to open up their eyes to who’s a tramp and who hain’t.”
“No,” says he, after a minute. “I’d like to. Gosh! how I’d like to, but
it wouldn’t do. I’m tryin’ to be respectable. If you was to fight,
nobody’d think anything about it; but if I was to fight, everybody ’d
say I was a rowdy and maybe I’d git arrested or somethin’. Wee-wee, I
jest _got_ to be respectable.”
“You hain’t afraid, be you?” says I, kind of looking at him edgeways.
“If you think I be,” says he, “come on off alone somewheres where nobody
’ll see us. I figger to show you mighty sudden.”
So that was all right. If he was the kind of a fellow that was afraid of
a bang in the nose I didn’t want to take any trouble for him, but he
wasn’t. So Banty and Skoodles got off without a licking that day. I just
yelled to them to mosey along because I was able to pick my company and
’most generally stuck to what I picked. So they hollered back something
disagreeable and went along.
I made up my mind right there that the first time I ketched either of
them alone I’d knock him into a peaked hat. Nobody could blame Catty for
what I did.
“We will go to see that painter—Mr. Jones,” said Catty.
So we went up to Sands Jones’s house, and there he was, standing just
outside the kitchen door with an ax in his hand, like he was going to
chop wood. He looked at the ax and then he looked at the wood and then
he breathed hard and rested the ax-head on the ground and looked over
the garden fence. Mrs. Jones poked her head out of the door.
“Sands Jones,” she said, “don’t you think I can’t see where you’re
lookin’—over the back fence toward the river. I’m watchin’ you, too. You
git to splittin’ if you expect to eat. Now chop, Sands, chop. I hain’t
goin’ to move off’n this spot till that ax-head hits a block of wood.”
“Now, Maw,” says Sands, “can’t a feller look around a bit?”
“He kin look after he splits,” she says. “Lift that there ax.”
He lifted it.
“Now chop.”
He chopped.
“Howdy, Mr. Jones?” says I.
He dropped his ax and looked at me kind of pleased.
“I come to talk business to you—paintin’ business,” says I.
“You chop,” says Mrs. Jones.
“How kin I chop and talk business, Maw? My perfession hain’t choppin’,
it’s paintin’. Now hain’t it, Maw? You can say no other ways if you was
to try.”
“This feller,” says I, pointing to Catty, “is named Atkins, and he’s got
paintin’ work.” Mr. Jones looked Catty over kind of hopeless, and then
says: “Paintin’ work? How much? Dog-kennel maybe. I hain’t no time to be
paintin’ dog-kennels.”
“It’s a big job, Mr. Jones,” says Catty, “and my father has to hire
several good men to help him.”
“Your father! Who’s your Paw, Sonny?”
“Mr. Atkins, the master painter,” says Catty, without wiggling an
eyebrow. “He calc’lates to hire several men, and sent me to see if you
wanted a job beginning Monday.”
“What’s the job?”
“Paintin’ Mr. Manning’s new warehouse.”
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
“Can’t do it. Too big. Before I got t’ other end of it painted the paint
on the first end ’u’d be wore out and I’d have to start in repaintin’
ag’in. Hain’t lookin’ for no permanent paintin’ job. I like variety.
Different jobs every day or so; that’s me.”
“You don’t have to do it alone,” says Catty. “There’ll be other men.
There’ll be my father to boss and to work, and this Mr. Patt—”
“Darkie Patt?”
“Yes.”
“Won’t work with him. Have nothin’ to do with him. Wouldn’t lean a
ladder ag’in’ the same buildin’ he was leanin’ a ladder agin.
“That’s what he says about you,” Catty says.
“Eh?”
“He says you can’t paint, nohow,” says Catty. “He says he was willin’ to
work, but that if you was on the same job he’d want twice the wages you
was gittin’ because he could paint twice as much and twice as well with
one hand.”
“Did, did he?”
“Yes, but I says I didn’t think so, and I says I’d like to have a chance
to prove it. It was a kind of a challenge to a paintin’-race. Yes, sir.
I says to Mr. Patt that I’d start him out paintin’ on one side and you
on the other. Even start. Then there’d be a race betwixt you two to see
who could do the most and the best. Yes, sir, and there was to be a
prize. Five dollars it was to the feller that got his side done first.”
“You mean Patt was willin’ to race _me_?”
“He’ll race you, all right.”
“Huh! Hear that, Maw?”
“I heard it,” says Mrs. Jones, “and if you paint like you split wood,
Patt kin sleep half a day and beat you with one hand tied.”
“Think so, do you? Think so? That’s your idee? Wa-al, I’ll show you.
That’s what I’ll do.... Maw, you jest walk down to that job and cock
your eyes up at me a-workin’ if you want to see paint fly. Paint hain’t
never flew as I’ll make it fly. You watch.”
“Then you agree?” says Catty.
“You kin bet your bottom dollar. When do we start?”
“Monday morning at seven. By the way, have you any ladders we can rent?”
“Jest rented my ladders to a feller in the next town. Wasn’t no paintin’
jobs in sight, so I figgered to realize on my investment.”
“All right.” says Catty, not showing a mite that he was disappointed.
“At seven sharp, on Monday.”
“I’ll be there,” says Mr. Jones.
After that we went over to Darkie Patt’s, and made about the same kind
of talk, and got the same results. Patt had two ladders, but both of
them was busted or something and couldn’t be used. Said he hadn’t
figured on painting much this summer, because, what with night lines and
one thing and another, he calc’lated to make a living a heap pleasanter
than by buttering the side of a house with yellow paint.
“Well,” says I, when we had gone off, leaving Mr. Patt hired for Monday
morning at seven, “you got your men hired to paint, but you hain’t
either ladders or brushes. How be you goin’ to make out?”
“Main thing is to find ladders, or scaffoldin’ or somethin’. When I git
them I calc’late to git the brushes and paints.”
I was trying hard to think of any ladders I’d ever seen, but I couldn’t
think of any. So we just walked along, down alleys and every place we
could think, looking to see if we couldn’t see some. After a while we
walked down Main Street, and just in front of the drug-store I saw Mrs.
Gage and Mrs. Gordon, Skoodles’s mother. Catty didn’t notice them, and I
thought maybe we would get past without being seen, but we didn’t. Just
as we were alongside Mrs. Gage looked up and saw us.
“There,” she says to Mrs. Gordon. “That’s the boy I mean—there, with the
Moore boy. Nice thing to have coming to town, isn’t it? I thought there
was a law or something about vagrants.... That Mr. Moore must be out of
his head to allow his son to play around with a young tramp like that.”
Mrs. Gordon looked and sniffed. “He’s got a hard face,” says she. “I
told my boy never to let me catch them together, and he promised.”
“When my husband comes home to-night I’m going to see if something can’t
be done about it,” says Mrs. Gage. “I wonder if that boy ’ll have the
cheek to go to school.”
“Oh, that isn’t likely,” says Mrs. Gordon. “That sort don’t take to
school much, I imagine.”
Catty let on like he didn’t hear, but I knew he heard, because in about
five minutes he spoke up and says: “When school starts this fall I be
a-goin’ and nobody hain’t goin’ to keep me away from it. I got a _right_
to go. When my Dad’s a business man in this town I’ll have as good a
right to go to school as anybody.”
“Sure,” says I.
“We got to have a place of business right on Main Street,” says he, kind
of to himself. “It won’t do jest to work, but we got to make a show of
it and look as big as we kin. I wonder if there’s a store we kin git?”
“One down to the end of the block,” says I. “Let’s look at it,” says he.
We walked along until we came to the building I meant. It was wood with
a false front—jest one story, but made to look like it had two, and
there was an iron hitching-rail in front of it. There was a good-sized
store and a small shop right next to it and opening into it. It was kind
of run down and needed painting and a window or so, but it was on Main
Street, and a good corner, too. Used to be a bakery there, but it went
out of business and nobody had rented it since.
“That ’ll do fine,” says Catty. “Dad kin use the big store for paints
and wall-papers and sich like, and I kin use the little shop.”
“What for?” says I.
“Oh,” says he, “so’s I kin sort of have a little business of my own and
maybe make a dollar or two. I kin tend it and Dad’s store, too, when
he’s out on a job.”
“Seems to me like you was cuttin’ out quite a spell of work for
yourself,” says I.
“I wonder if there’s rooms behind where we kin live?” says he.
So we took a look, and there were rooms there—four of them—a kitchen and
a dining-room and two bedrooms.
“Jest suits,” says Catty. “Who owns her?”
“Mr. Gage,” says I, with a chuckle.
Catty looked at me and then he grinned. “Guess maybe I better see him
’fore his wife gits a chance to talk to him to-night like she said she
was going to. Where’s he at?”
“Runs the grocery up the street.”
We walked right up there and found Mr. Gage shooing flies off the fruit
up in front.
“Howdy-do, Mr. Gage?” says I. “This is my friend, Catty Atkins.”
“Howdy?” says Mr. Gage. “What kin I do for you?”
“I’m sorter running errands for my Dad,” says Catty. “He’s goin’ into
business here, and wants to find out about that store buildin’ of you
down the street.”
“What business?” says Mr. Gage.
“Paintin’ and decoratin’,” says Catty.
“Jest come to town?”
“Yes. What rent do you ask?”
“Figger I ought to git twenty dollars a month for that buildin’.”
“Give you seventeen and a half,” says Catty, “and take it for not less
’n a year.”
“Rent payable in advance,” says Mr. Gage, cautious-like.
“We take it from the first of the month. Pay a month’s rent the mornin’
we move in. That all right?”
“Calc’late so.”
“Write it,” says Catty.
“Eh?”
“Set it down in pen and ink, so’s I kin show it to Dad and he’ll know
I’ve done what’s right,” says Catty.
So Mr. Gage went in and wrote it down like Catty said, and signed his
name to it. After that we went on hunting up ladders, but we didn’t find
any. It got supper-time and I left Catty and went home.
About nine o’clock that night our door-bell rang, and I went, and it was
Catty. He looked mad and he looked queer and he looked worried.
“Jest come over to tell you the town marshal just come to our house and
ordered us to git out of town within forty-eight hours. Says as how
he’ll put us in the calaboose for vagrants if we don’t move on.”
“What you goin’ to do?” says I, too surprised and hit all of a heap to
even say I was sorry.
“I dunno what I’m _goin’_ to do,” says Catty, with his jaw shoved out
and his eyes kind of hard and mad, “but I kin tell you what I hain’t
goin’ to do. I hain’t goin’ to move an inch.”
“Bully for you,” says I, and in another second he had turned around and
run off into the dark. I dunno to this day what made him come and tell
me about it, because he didn’t ask for any help or anything. But I got a
sneaking suspicion it was jest because he was sort of lonesome and kind
of wanted to make sure he really did have a friend in the world.