Jap Herron Part 7

CHAPTER V

j.a.p came running into the office, early in January, his freckled face aglow, his red hair standing wildly erect.

"Golly Haggins!" he exploded, "I got a letter from Wat. He's up at the Legislator and he writes--he writes this!" He fairly lunged the letter at Ellis.

Ellis read, scowling:

"My dear young Friend,--

"I am at the Halls of Justice and I want to fill my promise to reward you for the n.o.ble deed you done. There is a chance for a bright boy as page, and I have spoke for it for my n.o.ble boy. Come at once. Time and tide won't wait, and there is thirty other boys camped on the trail,

"Respectfully your Friend, "WAT HARLOW."

"Whoopee!" yelled Bill, jumping from his stool and turning a handspring across the office.

"Reckon I'd better ask Flossy to fix my things--get my clothes out?"

asked j.a.p, beaming radiantly over the big barrel stove. He started toward the door.

"Stop!" said Ellis, in a voice j.a.p had never heard. "You are not going."

"Not going?" echoed both boys hollowly.

"No!" almost shouted Ellis, his brown eyes flashing. "I might have expected this from that wooden-headed son of a lost art. Do you think that you are going to leave my office to lick the boots of that loafing gang of pie-biters? Not in a thousand years! I am going to put a tuck in that idea right now. And while I'm talking about it, you may as well know that Flossy is getting ready to teach you how to 'read and write and 'rithmetic,' as Bill says. And as for you, Bill, Flossy says that if your father hasn't enough pride to do the right thing by you, she'll give you an education, along with j.a.p. You begin your lessons to-morrow evening.

"j.a.p, write to that reformed auctioneer and thank him for his favor.

Tell him that you belong to the ancient and honorable order of printers. When he runs for governor, you will boom him. Till then, nothing doing in the 'Halls of Justice.'"

j.a.p sulked all day, but he wrote the letter whose contents might have changed his career, and the following evening he and Bill began the schooling that Flossy had planned. It was a full winter for the boys, the most important of their lives. Even when spring came, with its yawns and its drowsy fever, they begged that the lessons continue.

Already the effect was beginning to show in the galley proof.

One morning in July, j.a.p had held down the office alone. Flossy was not well, and Ellis spent as much time with her as possible. Bill bl.u.s.tered in, a look of disgust in his brown eyes.

"Ain't nothin' doin' in town, 'cept at Summers's," he exploded, luxuriating in the kind of speech that was tabooed in the presence of his elders. "Only ad I could scare up was at Summers's, and Ellis don't want that."

j.a.p looked from the door, beyond the little village park and the hotel, to where the dingy white face of the saloon stared impudently upon the town.

"I never see one of them places without scringin'," he said slowly.

"My pappy almost lived in one. When we were cold, he was warm. When Ma and us children were hungry, the saloon fed him, because--because he could be so amusing and entertaining when he was half drunk. Ma said that my pappy's folks were quality, but they didn't have any time for him.

"I used to creep around to the side winder to see what kind of a drunk he had. If it was a mean one, I'd run home and sneak Aggie out and hide. He had a spite agin us two, and when he had a mean drunk he used to beat us. He was skeered to fetch f.a.n.n.y Maud. She had the wild-cattest temper you ever saw. He tried to pull her out of bed by her hair one night, and she jumped on him and scratched his face like a map. Ma had to drag her off, and if he hadn't run, f.a.n.n.y would 'a' got him again. After that he would brag what a fine girl she was. One night Aggie and me hid in a straw stack all night."

Bill looked sorrowfully upon his friend.

"I thought I was the most forsakenest boy in the world," he said. "But my father never beat me, and he never touches no kind of licker. He just don't like me around. You know my mother died when I was born, and somehow he seems to blame it on me. I don't know how to figger it, for he married in a year, and when that one died it didn't take him no time to start lookin' out again. He hardly ever speaks to me, 'cept to cuss me or tell me what a nuisance I am. Allus makes me feel like a cabbage worm."

"Cabbage worm?" queried j.a.p.

"Yes, they turn green when they eat, and I feel like I am green, every bite I take. He looks at me so mean, like he thought I hadn't any right to eat. That's why I eat at Flossy's, every time she asks me.

The only nice thing my pappy ever done for me was to put me in here with Ellis. j.a.p," he broke off suddenly, "I'm durn glad you licked me, that day. But your hair _was_ red!"

Ellis had come quietly in at the rear door and had listened, half consciously, to the sacred confession. His face saddened for a moment.

Then he squared his shoulders and his dark eyes flashed.

"I am going to make men of those boys yet," he promised himself. "Who knows----"

He interrupted the spasm of painful speculation, the dark foreboding that had for days hovered over him. The heat of summer and his anxiety over Flossy were beginning to tell on his nerves. He tiptoed softly out of the back door, across the weed-grown yard and out through the alley gate. A moment later he came in at the front door, whistling blithely.

The summer was intensely hot. As the dog-days waxed, Ellis grew ever more and more morose. His sharp bursts of temper were made tolerable only by the swift justice of the amend. Late in September he came down to the office one morning, pale and shaken. The boys had been sticking type for an hour when his sudden entrance startled them.

"Flossy is very sick," he said with lips that quivered, "and I will have to trust you boys."

j.a.p followed him to the door. His face was downcast.

"Is it true, Ellis? Bill said that Flossy would--would----" He gulped. He could not finish. Ellis turned suddenly and sat down at the table and buried his face in the pile of exchanges. His body shook with the effort to suppress his emotion. Bill slipped down from his stool and the two awkward, ungainly youths looked at each other in embarra.s.sed sorrow. Finally j.a.p laid an inky hand on Ellis's shoulder.

"Tell her--tell her," he stuttered, "that Bill and me are--are a--prayin'."

Ellis gave a mighty sob and rushed away, bare-headed.

The two apprentices sat at their cases, the tears wetting the type in their sticks. The long day dragged by. Neither of them remembered noon, but plodded stolidly and silently through the clippings on their copy hooks.

It was growing dusk when a great commotion arose. It seemed to come from the corner near Blanke's drug store. It gathered force as it neared Granger's bank, Now it had reached the mouth of the alley that separated the bank from the _Herald_ office. There was cheering and laughter. j.a.p's face hardened. He slung one leg to the floor. How dared any one cheer or laugh, when Flossy lay dying?

In another instant Ellis burst into the room. His dark locks were rumpled, his eyes wild and bright.

"Get out all the roosters--and the stallions, too!" he shouted. "Open a can of vermilion and, in long pica, double-lead it: 'It is a boy!'"

j.a.p let the other leg fall and dragged himself around. His mouth had fallen loose on its hinges. He sat down on the floor and gaped foolishly at Ellis.

"She's feeling fine," babbled Ellis, "and you and Bill are coming in the morning to see the boy." He rushed out again.

j.a.p looked at Billy glued to the stool, holding in one paralyzed hand the inverted stick.

"Gee!" said j.a.p.

In the morning they tiptoed into Flossy's room. Very pale and weak was the energetic little woman who had taken the moulding of their destinies into her hands. She smiled gently and, as mothers have done since time was, she tenderly drew back the covers from a tiny black head and motioned for the two to look.

"Our boy," she said, smiling radiantly. "I am going to name him Jasper William, and I want you to make him very proud of the men he was named for."

The hot tears sprang to j.a.p's eyes and fell upon the little red face.

The wee mite, perhaps prompted by an angel whisper from the land from whence he came, threw aloft one wrinkled hand and touched him on the cheek. Sobbing stormily, j.a.p hid his face in the covers as he knelt beside the bed. Then he took the little fingers in his.

"If G.o.d lets me live, Flossy, I will make him proud of me."