THE MYSTERY OF THE TWO STORES
When the dinky little train pulled out and left Scott standing on the
platform, he realized why he had not seen the town of Caspar from the
car window. It consisted of a railroad station, two stores, four
dwelling houses and another large, decrepit-looking building which could
not easily be classified, and they were all on the other side of the
railroad track from Scott’s position in the car. From that side of the
train no one would have suspected the presence of a town anywhere in
that vicinity. The mountain slope came down almost to the railroad track
and the forest on that side was almost unbroken.
The station agent seemed quite interested at the sight of a stranger. He
watched Scott for a minute and seemed to be studying him in his own slow
way. Finally he seemed to decide that it would be safe to speak.
“Howdy! Stranger in these parts, be ye?” he drawled.
“Yes,” Scott said, “is there a hotel here or any place where a man can
stay?”
“Reckon you can stay at the hotel. Ain’t no place else you could stay in
this town and live.”
Scott thought at the time that that was a rather peculiar remark for any
one to make, but when he found that the station agent also ran the hotel
he charged it up to professional pride. When he saw the hotel he
wondered how any one could have any professional pride in it.
The hotel turned out to be the nondescript building which stood, or
rather sat, apart from the others at the end of the street. It was a
large, rambling, barn-like structure a story and a half high. Half a
dozen gables stuck up from the side of the roof. It looked very old and
its first coat of paint had never been renewed. The ground around it was
as bare as the weathered clapboarding. There was no sign of any attempt
at beautifying either grounds or building. A rough picket fence
separated it from the rest of the village, but just why no one could
tell, for the ground inside the fence was, if anything, more barren than
that outside. Altogether it was a forlorn-looking place.
The proprietor led Scott upstairs into a room large enough for a banquet
hall. It looked even more desolate, if possible, than the outside of the
house. It contained a bed covered with an old patch-work quilt and two
boxes—one to serve as a chair and the other as a washstand (you could
tell which was the washstand by the old tin basin half full of dirty
water).
Scott looked around the room in dismay, but he had made up his mind that
he would have to put up with it when he caught a sickening odor, as of a
dead mouse, that apparently came from the closet. That he could not
stand. He had heard of the touchiness of these people, and he did not
want to offend them, especially as he would probably have to make the
place his headquarters for some time. But he had to get out of there by
some means.
“You haven’t any bedroom on the first floor, have you?” he asked, trying
to conceal the disgust he actually felt. “I may be here a long time, and
there may be a great many people coming to see me, and a ground-floor
room would be much more convenient.”
“Shore, I reckon we can accommodate you,” the man said, and he led the
way apathetically downstairs again.
He opened a door off the long back porch and stepped back to let Scott
enter. It was a palace compared with the upstairs room. The furniture
was old, but everything was there down to a rag carpet on the floor,
and, moreover, everything looked clean.
“This will be fine,” Scott said as he glanced quickly about. “What time
do you have dinner?”
“Twelve o’clock, most times, but there ain’t anything certain about it.”
He paused at the door on his way out. “It ain’t none of my business, but
you ain’t a U. S. marshal, be you?”
“No,” Scott laughed, “nothing like that. Why, are there many moonshiners
around here?”
“I ain’t saying anything about moonshiners,” the man replied in the same
dull tone. “I was just going to tell you that this was a mighty
unhealthy country around here for the U. S. marshal.”
Scott did not know whether this was meant as a friendly warning or as a
threat, and before he could ask anything more about it the man was gone.
As he was not in any way connected with the United States marshal, he
thought no more about it.
Left to himself, he began to examine the room more closely. It was clean
all right, but the general effect of it was most grotesque. The high,
carved head-board of the old walnut bed might have had a place in a
medieval museum, but here in this room it looked out of place like
everything else in it. When Scott’s eyes fell on the wall paper, he
stood aghast. He counted thirty-seven different patterns, each a small
square evidently taken from a country storekeeper’s sample book, and
only a third of the wall was covered. The east window was heavily
curtained with portières, lace curtains and a shade. Scott peeped out.
It opened almost into the mountainside and no human habitation was in
sight. The glass door opening on to the back porch—which was by far the
most frequented part of the house—was not curtained at all. It was a
queer place, but Scott had been in worse, and he decided that it would
have to do.
He had been so interested in finding a place to stay that he had
forgotten all about the man from the Washington office who was to meet
him here. He went out to inquire for him. The dining room opened on to
the porch next to his room and the kitchen was next to that.
The man was nowhere to be seen, but there were three women in the
kitchen and they were feverishly discussing Scott’s probable business.
Complete silence fell on them all when he appeared in the doorway.
“Pardon me,” he said. “Do you know whether Mr. Reynolds of the Forest
Service has been here?”
The women looked at each other as though an important problem had been
solved before any one answered.
Then one of the women answered with a question: “Are you Mr. Burton?”
“Yes,” Scott said.
“Mr. Reynolds left here this morning. He said that if Mr. Burton, the
new supervisor, came to tell him he would be back to-night or to-morrow
morning. I was looking for a much older man,” she added looking at him
curiously.
“Well,” Scott laughed, “time will correct that.”
Scott noticed that these women were all sizing him up just as the
station agent had done a little while before. He went back to his room,
and looked in the glass to see what could be wrong. He could see nothing
to attract attention. He tried to forget the occurrence and went out to
see the town and surrounding country.
He wandered down the street, if the road between the two stores could be
called a street, and wondered why there should be two stores in such a
place. Judging from the unbroken forests on the mountain slopes he did
not see where enough people could possibly come from to support any
store at all.
On the porch of each store there was a small group of idlers holding
down the dry-goods boxes, and Scott saw that they were sizing him up
just as the women had done. Moreover, the stare of these men seemed to
be distinctly unfriendly. It made him feel uneasy. He was glad when he
had run the gauntlet of unfriendly stares, and was out in the open road
with only the railroad station and the mountains before him. But he had
one more examination to stand. The station agent was watching him from
the corner of the platform. In fact, Scott caught him squatting down to
get a better view of him even before he came out in the open. He
resented this officious spying on his movements and turned aside into a
mountain road which wound its way up a timber-covered slope.
“Heh!” Scott turned to see the man coming towards him at what was an
unusual gait for him. “Didn’t buy anything at the store, did you?”
Scott looked at him indignantly for an instant, but he remembered again
that he had to live with these people, probably for a long time, and did
not want to offend them. “No,” he replied as pleasantly as he could.
“Why?”
“I just wanted to know,” the man replied frankly. “But if you haven’t
done it, don’t.” The man had evidently noticed that Scott had resented
his interference and he walked away with considerable dignity without
making any further explanation.
Scott started to call him back but changed his mind and continued his
walk up the road. He wanted to get away from these inquisitive people
for a while, and try to think things over. Fate, however, seemed to have
decided otherwise. He had gone a little more than a quarter of a mile up
the winding road through the heavy hardwood timber when he came to a
little cabin set back only a few feet from the road behind the
inevitable picket fence. An old man was sitting on the porch, and he
sized Scott up with the same all-consuming curiosity, but his gaze
seemed to be wholly friendly. There was none of that furtive animosity
he had felt rather than seen in the groups down at the store.
“Howdy, stranger?” the old man greeted him pleasantly. “Be you the new
supervisor?”
The old man’s manner was so evidently friendly, and his curiosity so
frank that Scott warmed up to him at once.
“Yes,” he admitted cheerfully, “I’m the new supervisor.”
“Haven’t bought anything at the store yet, have you?” the old man
continued in his friendly way.
There was that same question about the store and Scott stiffened for an
instant, but he thought better of it. Maybe he could learn something
from this old man.
“No,” Scott said, “I have not bought anything from the store. Tell me,
why does everybody ask me that? I have not been in this town much more
than half an hour and two people have already asked me if I have bought
anything at the store. What is the meaning of it?”
The old man looked at him thoughtfully for a minute as though hesitating
to answer the question. Then he answered slowly as though pronouncing
final judgment:
“Because when you do buy anything from one of those stores, you might as
well leave the town for all the good you’ll ever be able to do in this
country,” and he turned as though to enter the house.