"Guess his kind don't want to mix in with Dick"--and started for the
door.
"I have no objection," I answered meekly, "provided I can reach the
lecture hall in time."
The driver halted, hit the spittoon squarely in the middle, and said
with deep earnestness and with a slight trace of deference:--
"Guess you don't know it all, stranger. Dick's served time. Been up
twice."
"Convict?"--my voice evidently betrayed my surprise.
"You've struck it fust time--last trip was for five years."
He stood whip in hand, his fur cap pulled over his ears, his eyes
fixed on mine, noting the effect of the shot. Every other eye in the
room was similarly occupied.
I had no desire to walk to Bingville in the cold. I felt, too, the
necessity of proving myself up to the customary village standard in
courage and complacency.
"That don't worry me a bit, my friend. There are a good many of us out
of jail that ought to be in, and a good many in that ought to be out."
I said this calmly, like a man of wide experience and knowledge of the
world, one who had traveled extensively, and whose knowledge of
convicts and other shady characters was consequently large and varied.
The prehistoric age of this epigram was apparently unnoticed by the
driver, for he started forward, grasped my hand, and blurted out in a
whole-souled, hearty way, strangely in contrast with his former
manner:--
"You ain't so gol-darned stuck up, be ye? Yes, I'll take ye, and glad
to." Then he stooped over and laid his hand on my shoulder and said in
a softened voice: "When ye git 'longside o' Dick you tell him that;
it'll please him," and he stalked out and shut the door behind him.
Another dead silence fell upon the group. Then a citizen on the other
side of the stove, by the aid of his elbows, lifted himself
perpendicularly, unhooked a coat from a peg, and remarked to himself
in a tone that expressed supreme disgust:--
"Please him! In a pig's eye it will," and disappeared into the night.
Only two loungers were now left--the butternut man with the sinister
expression, and the red-faced man with the dyed mustache.
The landlord for the second time dropped into a chair beside me.
"I knowed Dick was out, but I didn't say nothing, so many of these
fellers 'round here is down on him. The night his time was up Dick
come in here on his way home and asked after his mother. He hadn't
heard from her for a month, and was nigh worried to death about her. I
told him she was all right, and had him in to dinner. He'd fleshed up
a bit and nobody didn't catch on who he was,--bein' away nigh five
years,--and so I passed him off for a drummer."
At this the red-faced man who had been tilted back, his feet on the
iron rod encircling the stove, brought them down with a bang,
stretched his arms above his head, and said with a yawn, addressing
the pots of geraniums on the window sill, "Them as likes jail-birds
can have jail-birds," and lounged out of the room, followed by the
citizen in butternut. It was apparent that the supper hour of the
group had arrived. It was equally evident that the hospitality of the
fireside did not extend to the table.
"You heard that fellow, didn't you?" said the landlord, turning to me
after a moment's pause. "You'd think to hear him talk there warn't
nobody honest 'round here but him. That's Chris Rankin--he keeps a rum
mill up to the Forks and sells tanglefoot and groceries to the miners.
By Sunday mornin' he's got 'bout every cent they've earned. There
ain't a woman in the settlement wouldn't be glad if somebody would
break his head. I'd rather be Dick Sands than him. Dick never drank a
drop in his life, and won't let nobody else if he can help it. That's
what that slouch hates him for, and that's what he hates me for."
The landlord spoke with some feeling--so much so that I squared my
chair and faced him to listen the better. His last remark, too,
explained a sign tacked over the desk reading, "No liquors sold here,"
and which had struck me as unusual when I entered.
"What was this man's crime?" I asked. "There seems to be some
difference of opinion about him."
"His crime, neighbor, was because there was a lot of fellers that
didn't have no common sense--that's what his crime was. I've known
Dick since he was knee-high to a barrel o' taters, and there warn't no
better"----
"But he was sent up the second time," I interrupted, glancing at my
watch. "So the driver said." I had not the slightest interest in Mr.
Richard Sands, his crimes or misfortunes.
"Yes, and they'd sent him up the third time if Judge Polk had lived.
The first time it was a pocket-book and three dollars, and the second
time it was a ham. Polk did that. Polk's dead now. God help him if
he'd been alive when Dick got out the last time. First question he
asked me after I told him his mother was all right was whether 'twas
true Polk was dead. When I told him he was he didn't say nothin' at
first--just looked down on the floor and then he said slow-like:--
"'If Polk had had any common sense, Uncle Jimmy,'--he always calls me
'Uncle Jimmy,'--'he'd saved himself a heap o' worry and me a good deal
o' sufferin'. I'm glad he's dead.'"