The Other Fellow Part 1

The Other Fellow.

by F. Hopkinson Smith.

d.i.c.k SANDS, CONVICT.

I

The stage stopped at a disheartened-looking tavern with a sagging porch and sprawling wooden steps. A fat man with a good-natured face, tagged with a gray chin whisker, bareheaded, and without a coat--there was snow on the ground, too--and who said he was the landlord, lifted my yellow bag from one of the long chintz-covered stage cushions, and preceded me through a sanded hall into a low-ceiled room warmed by a red-hot stove, and lighted by windows filled with geraniums in full bloom. The effect of this color was so surprising, and the contrast to the desolate surroundings outside so grateful, that, without stopping to register my name, I drew up a chair and joined the circle of baking loungers. My oversight was promptly noted by the clerk--a sallow-faced young man with an uncomfortably high collar, red necktie, and stooping shoulders--and as promptly corrected by his dipping a pen in a wooden inkstand and holding the book on his knee until I could add my own superscription to those on its bespattered page. He had been considerate enough not to ask me to rise.

The landlord studied the signature, his spectacles on his nose, and remarked in a kindly tone:--

"Oh, you're the man what's going to lecture to the college."

"Yes; how far is it from here?"

"'Bout two miles out, Bingville way. You'll want a team, won't you? If I'd knowed it was you when yer got out I'd told the driver to come back for you. But it's all right--he's got to stop here again in half an hour--soon 's he leaves the mail."

I thanked him and asked him to see that the stage called for me at half-past seven, as I was to speak at eight o'clock. He nodded in a.s.sent, dropped into a rocking chair, and guided a spittoon into range with his foot. Then he backed away a little and began to scrutinize my face. Something about me evidently puzzled him. A leaning mirror that hung over a washstand reflected his head and shoulders, and gave me every expression that flitted across his good-natured countenance.

His summing up was evidently favorable, for his scrutinizing look gave place to a benign smile which widened into curves around his mouth and lost itself in faint ripples under his eyes. Hitching his chair closer, he spread his fat knees, and settled his broad shoulders, lazily stroking his chin whisker all the while with his puffy fingers.

"Guess you ain't been at the business long," he said kindly. "Last one we had a year ago looked kinder peaked." The secret of his peculiar interest was now out. "Must be awful tough on yer throat, havin' to holler so. I wasn't up to the show, but the fellers said they heard him 'fore they got to the crossin'. 'Twas spring weather and the winders was up. He didn't have no baggage--only a paper box and a strap. I got supper for him when he come back, and he did eat hearty--did me good to watch him." Then, looking at the clock and recalling his duties as a host, he leaned over, and shielding his mouth with his hand, so as not to be overheard by the loungers, said in a confidential tone, "Supper'll be on in half an hour, if you want to clean up. I'll see you get what you want. Your room's first on the right--you can't miss it."

I expressed my appreciation of his timely suggestion, and picking up the yellow bag myself--hall-boys are scarce in these localities--mounted the steps to my bedroom.

Within the hour--fully equipped in the regulation costume, swallow-tail, white tie, and white waistcoat--I was again hugging the stove, for my bedroom had been as cold as a barn.

My appearance created something of a sensation. A tall man in a b.u.t.ternut suit, with a sinister face, craned his head as I pa.s.sed, and the sallow-faced clerk leaned over the desk in an absorbed way, his eyes glued to my shirt front. The others looked stolidly at the red bulb of the stove. No remarks were made--none aloud, the splendor of my appearance and the immaculate nature of my appointments seeming to have paralyzed general conversation for the moment. This silence continued. I confess I did not know how to break it. Tavern stoves are often trying ordeals to the wayfarer; the silent listeners with the impa.s.sive leather faces and foxlike eyes disconcert him; he knows just what they will say about him when they go out. The awkward stillness was finally broken by a girl in blue gingham opening a door and announcing supper.

It was one of those frying-pan feasts of eggs, bacon, and doughnuts, with canned corn in birds' bathtubs, plenty of green pickles, and dabs of home-made preserves in pressed gla.s.s saucers. It occupied a few moments only. When it was over, I resumed my chair by the stove.

The night had evidently grown colder. The landlord had felt it, for he had put on his coat; so had a man with a dyed mustache and heavy red face, whom I had left tipped back against the wall, and who was now raking out the ashes with a poker. So had the b.u.t.ternut man, who had moved two diameters nearer the centre of comfort. All doubts, however, were dispelled by the arrival of a thickset man with ruddy cheeks, who slammed the door behind him and moved quickly toward the stove, shedding the snow from his high boots as he walked. He nodded to the landlord and spread his stiff fingers to the red glow. A faint wreath of white steam arose from his c.o.o.nskin overcoat, filling the room with the odor of wet horse blankets and burned leather. The landlord left the desk, where he had been figuring with the clerk, approached my chair, and pointing to the new arrival, said:--

"This is the driver I been expectin' over from h.e.l.l's Diggings. He'll take you. This man"--he now pointed to me--"wants to go to the college at 7.30."

The new arrival shifted his whip to the other hand, looked me all over, his keen and penetrating eye resting for an instant on my white shirt and waistcoat, and answered slowly, still looking at me, but addressing the landlord:--

"He'll have to get somebody else. I got to take d.i.c.k Sands over to Millwood Station; his mother's took bad again."

"What, d.i.c.k Sands?" came a voice from the other side of the stove. It was the man in the b.u.t.ternut suit.

"Why, d.i.c.k Sands," replied the driver in a positive tone.

"Not _d.i.c.k Sands_?" The voice expressed not only surprise but incredulity.

"Yes, d.i.c.k SANDS," shouted the driver in a tone that carried with it his instant intention of breaking anybody's head who doubted the statement.

"Gosh! that so? When did he git out?" cried the b.u.t.ternut man.

"Oh, a month back. He's been up in h.e.l.l's Diggin's ever since." Then finding that no one impugned his veracity, he added in a milder tone: "His old mother's awful sick up to her sister's back of Millwood. He got word a while ago."

"Well, this gentleman's got to speak at the college, and our team won't be back in time." The landlord p.r.o.nounced the word "gentleman"

with emphasis. The white waistcoat had evidently gotten in its fine work.

"Let d.i.c.k walk," broke in the clerk. "He's used to it, and used to runnin', too"--this last with a dry laugh in spite of an angry glance from his employer.

"Well, d.i.c.k won't walk," snapped the driver, his voice rising. "He'll ride like a white man, he will, and that's all there is to it. His leg's bad ag'in."

These remarks were not aimed at me nor at the room. They were fired pointblank at the clerk. I kept silent; so did the clerk.

"What time was you goin' to take d.i.c.k?" inquired the landlord in a conciliatory tone.

"'Bout 7.20--time to catch the 8.10."

"Well, now, why can't you take this man along? You can go to the Diggings for d.i.c.k, and then"--pointing again at me--"you can drop him at the college and keep on to the station. 'Tain't much out of the way."

The driver scanned me closely and answered coldly:--

"Guess his kind don't want to mix in with d.i.c.k"--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. d.i.c.k'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' d.i.c.k 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 b.u.t.ternut man with the sinister expression, and the red-faced man with the dyed mustache.