Jap Herron Part 8

He choked and dashed outside to join Bill, who was snubbing [Transcriber's note: "snubbing" is what's in the source book. Perhaps the author meant "snuffling" or "sobbing".] audibly on the back steps.

After a m.u.f.fled silence he said, his eyes growing suddenly bright:

"Bill, did you notice what Flossy said? She said the 'men' that he was named after. Bill, we've got to quit kiddin' and begin to grow up."

CHAPTER VI

Time pa.s.sed, after the easy-going manner of Bloomtown. j.a.p was sixteen, long, ungainly and stooped from bending over the case. Bill, a little older in months, but possessed of immortal youth, was stocky and rather good looking. Four years of daily intercourse had wrought a subtle change in their relations, four years of the stern and the sweet that Ellis and Flossy Hinton had brought, for the first time, into their lives.

Bill was at the table, the exchanges pushed back in a disorderly heap, as he surrept.i.tiously figured a tough problem in bookkeeping that Flossy had given him. j.a.p, with furtive air, bolted the history lesson that ought to have been learned the day before. Ellis, his back to the one big window in the office, scowled over the proofs he was rattling.

From time to time he peppered the air with remarks that fell like bird shot on the tough oblivion of his two a.s.sistants. At length forbearance gave way under the strain, and he said, in cold and measured tones:

"When you are unable to decipher the idea I am trying to convey, I wish that you would take me into your confidence."

Bill looked up, a grin on his round, shining face, a grin that was fixed to immobility by the fierceness of Ellis's glance.

"I note that you have injected much native humor into perfectly legitimate prose," the stern voice continued. He read:

"'Jim Blanke has a splendid a.s.sortment of Sundays.' Now please explain. You are causing the good folks of this town unnecessary worry. My copy reads, 'sundries.'"

"j.a.p done it," vouchsafed Bill.

"Who done this?" Ellis stressed the verbal blunder witheringly, as he pointed his pencil at the next item. It read:

"Ross Hawkins soled twenty-five yearling calves."

"It looked that way," argued j.a.p.

"A devil of a couple you are," declared Ellis wrathfully. "Can't either of you reason? Did you ever hear of any one soling a yearling calf? Ross Hawkins is an auctioneer, not a shoemaker."

The boys looked sheepishly at each other. Suddenly Bill flung himself on his stomach and howled in glee.

"Lordee! What if that had 'a' got in the paper!" he gasped.

"There would be two fine, large, lazy boys out of a job," Ellis said severely.

He threw aside the copy and lifted the type. j.a.p followed the movement with anxious eye. Another explosion hung, tense and imminent, in the air.

"Have you washed that type yet, Bill?" he asked, eager to placate Ellis.

It was the custom for the boy nearest the door to disappear when the time for washing a form was at hand.

"It was your job," protested Bill. "You promised to wash Wat Harlow's speech if I cleaned Kelly Joneses stock bill."

Ellis sat down wearily.

"Oh, we're agoing to do it all, this evening," cried Bill, defiantly.

"You promised that we could clean out that box of cuts. You promised a long time ago."

"Go to it," said Ellis, his voice relaxing, and the two boys bolted into the back room. A little later he joined them. j.a.p and Bill sat on the floor, blowing the dust from a lot of dirty old woodcuts.

"I bought them with the job," he said, turning the pile over with his foot. He sat down on the emptied box and watched them as they examined the cuts.

"What is this?" asked j.a.p, peering at the largest block in the lot.

"That is a cut of the town, as it was when I came here," said Ellis, a shadow of reminiscence crossing his face, as he took the block in his long fingers.

Bill drew himself to his knees and looked at the maze of lines and depressions curiously. The picture was as strange to him as it was to j.a.p. Ellis continued:

"There were three business houses here, besides the blacksmith shop and the saloon. Here they are. Ezra Bowers, Bill's grandfather, with the help of his three sons, ran a general store where they sold everything from castor oil to mowing machines. Phineas Blome--an unmistakable son of old Jerusalem--sold clothing and more castor oil and mowing machines. There wasn't such a thing as a butcher shop in Bloomtown.

When the natives wanted fresh meat, they ordered it brought out on the hack. In other parts of the world, that inst.i.tution is sometimes called a stage; but here I learned that its right name is 'hack.' The southern terminus of the Bloomtown, Barton and Faber hack-line, that has done its best for thirty years to prevent us from being entirely marooned, was over there at the south side of Blome's Park, exactly as it is to-day. The hotel didn't have a bit more paint, the first night I slept in it, than it has now."

"Flossy said that weathered shingles were fashionable," Bill grinned, taking up another cut. "Here's the Public Square--you call it Blome's Park, but I never heard anybody else call it that," he added, his voice lifting in a note of query. "That's the Square, all right, and the Town Hall, with 'leven horses. .h.i.tched in front of it."

"Yes, when old man Blome laid out his farm in town lots, he reserved his woods pasture for a city park. You never heard of an orthodox town that didn't begin with a Public Square, and that little rocky glade with the wet-weather spring had the only trees within ten miles of here. It wasn't fit for farming, so Blome argued that n.o.body would buy it with a view to raising garden truck. But your foxy Uncle Blome didn't sacrifice anything by his generosity to the town that was about to be born. He reserved the lots facing the park on three sides, and held them at an exorbitant figure--as much as five dollars a front foot, I should say.

"The lots at the north and east were to be sold for high-cla.s.s residences only. Those at the west were reserved for business houses.

Behold the embryo Main street! Overlooking the park at the south was Blome's farm house, since metamorphosed into a tavern and barns for the stage horses. The last of the Blomes shook the dust of Bloomtown from his feet when Carter bought his interest in the hack line. Bill's grandfather had a farm adjoining Blome's land at the west; but Ezra Bowers, merchant prince and attorney-at-law," he said whimsically, "had to have a residence in the fashionable quarter, fronting the park. A little patch of the old farm is quite good enough for Mr. and Mrs.

Ellis Hinton and their two sons, j.a.p and Jasper William."

j.a.p caught Ellis's hand, a lump arising in his throat. Bill relieved the momentary tension by turning over another cut. A familiar face looked out at him from the grime of years. Ellis glanced at it and smiled.

"It is a great thing, j.a.p, the birth of a town. Bloomtown was really never born. The stork dropped her when he was traveling for a friendly haven. For ten years she lay, just as she fell, without visible signs of life. About twenty families existed, somehow. They had pigs, chickens and garden truck, and to all intents they would go on existing till the last trump.

"One day I went out into the country to attend a sale. Boys, I was never so well pleased with a day's work as I was with that day's jaunt.

I heard the most masterly bit of eloquence that ever came from the lips of an auctioneer. The man had the crowd hypnotized. He even sold me an accordion, a thing I was born to hate. The fact that it was wind-broken and rattly never occurred to me until I woke up, after he had done. Then I went to him and said:

"'You an auctioneer! You should be in the Halls of Justice, telling the people how to interpret their laws.'

"The idea struck him. He came into town with me and we talked the matter over. He was easily the best known and most liked man in the county. It was then that the political bug stung our good friend, Wat Harlow. Wat moved his family to town and soon he had a decent habitation. He stimulated a rain of paint and a hail of shingle nails.

He prodded the older inhabitants to an era of wooden pavements and stone crossings. Bill's grandfather objected, because he said it cut down the sale of rubber hip-boots; but Wat's eloquence was the key to fit anything that tried to lock the wheels of progress. He did more than that. He brought Jim Blanke from Leesburg to start a decent drug store.

"After that he robbed Barton of Tom Granger, and together they started the first bank of Bloomtown. Granger's wife and baby, with Wat's wife, were the civilization. Mrs. Granger was almost an invalid, even then, but she gathered the women together and formed an aid society. She begged and cajoled Bowers out of enough money to build a little church on the lot that Blome had donated. I joined the church, for the moral example. I don't remember what denomination it was supposed to be. We had services once a month; but Mrs. Granger was the real power in the town. She introduced boiled shirts and neckties. Tom bought the big patch of ground, north of the park, and set out those elm trees before his foundation was in. Then Jim Blanke got Otto Kraus to come here and start a private school. Otto played the little cabinet organ in church, and taught all the children music, after school hours. Thus was Bloomtown born. Wat Harlow made the blood circulate in her moribund veins."

j.a.p looked into Ellis's face, his freckled cheeks glowing.

"That's not what Wat Harlow said," he declared breathlessly.

"What did he say?" asked Ellis sharply.

"Why--why," gulped j.a.p, "he said that Bloomtown was dead as a herring, and too no-account to be buried, till Ellis Hinton came and jerked her out of the mud and started her to breathe."

Ellis got up and dusted his trousers.

"As I said before, Wat was an eloquent auctioneer. Talk is his trade, and he keeps in practice. Dilute his enthusiasm one-half, j.a.p. And now, get to work, washing up."

As he left the office he encountered a group of t.i.ttering girls, in front of the bank. They scattered when they perceived that Ellis and not Bill had come forth. Bill was the lion of the town. Already the girls had begun to come after papa's paper, on publishing day, which upset the machinery of the office, never too dependable.