Hosmer said slowly: “Case is finished, Jim. Decision is all written. It’s in that envelop there.” He pointed toward the top of his desk.
Cotterill shot a glance in that direction; and beads of sweat started upon his forehead. “That’s all right,” he said. “No need of going into that. I know I’m not much as a trial lawyer. I know I fell down on this case. Facts and law were with us; but I didn’t get the stuff into the record the way I’d ought to, and some of our witnesses didn’t stand up when Marston got after them. Marston’s a good lawyer; but there’s more to trying a case than the court end of it. I’m trying my case right now, Bob.”
The Judge did not reply. He seemed to have settled into a certain stony calm; his eyes weresteady and inscrutable. Cotterill waited for an instant, then swung swiftly on.
“Thing is,” he said. “You want to figure whether you’re going to stand with us, and have us back of you; or whether you want to stand with this other bunch. They were against you at the start. You know that. And they’re not going to shift now, even if you’re good to them. They’ll just figure you’re scared. You’re coming up for reelection one of these days. Maybe for a bigger job. And if we’re solid back of you, you can have anything you want. You know that, Bob. But if we split, you’re a goner. There’s the whole thing. You stick with us, and we’ll stick with you. You throw us, and we’ll—remember it. We’re not asking favors for what we have done, but for what we figure to do. See?”
He stopped short, watching the other shrewdly. The Judge at first made no move, said no word. His eyes were thoughtful; and his glance was not turned toward the other man.
“Do you see?” Cotterill repeated.
“I—see what you mean,” said the Judge, slowly.
“Then what do you say?” the fat man insisted.
Judge Hosmer swung slowly to face him. There was something judicial in his tones, even and calm; and his colloquialisms were gone.
“I’m not ambitious—in a political way,” he replied.
Jim Cotterill watched him, marked the apparent hesitation in his answer; and the fat man licked his lips, and looked behind him toward the door with something furtive in his manner. Thenjerked his chair still nearer to the other, with the buttonholing instinct always so strong in his ilk. And laughed in an unpleasant way.
“All right, Bob,” he said. “All right. I get you. We’re ready to meet you on that ground, too.”
“On what ground?” the Judge asked tonelessly.
Cotterill whisperingly explained. “We know your affairs pretty well, Bob,” he said, assuringly. “You’ve got a reasonable salary; but it’s none too much. You like to live comfortable; and nobody blames you. Everybody feels the same way. There are a lot of folks that’d like to be friendly, help you out. If you wanted they should. And there are a lot of ways they could help you. Any way you like.”
“What way?” Judge Hosmer insisted.
Cotterill’s embarrassed reluctance, if such an emotion can fairly be attributed to the man, passed before the Judge’s encouraging inquiry. “There’s that mortgage,” he suggested. “I know it’s a burden to you. It ain’t that you need the money. You’re paying six per cent. on it, and making more than that on the money it releases for you. Pays any man with a business head to borrow at six per cent. That’s all right. But maybe there are times when you fret a little bit about that mortgage. Well, Judge, you don’t need to. Easiest thing in the world to have it tore up. All you got to do is say the word.”
The Judge did not say the word. Cotterill pursued the subject.
“Maybe there’s something else,” he suggested. “I take it you’re a business man, but I may bewrong. Maybe you don’t know where to get any better than six per cent. for your money. If that’s the trouble, we can help you, too. You don’t know the market. Not your business to. But there are men that do know it. Fact is, they are the market, Judge. They make it jump over a stick whenever they like. Old Tom is in with them. And they’d be glad to show you the way. You wouldn’t have to worry. You just open an account. Put in as much as you like. I can guarantee it’ll double and double for you, pretty regular. Handled right. You can call it a speculation; but it’s not that. Not when the market is trained, way it is. You see how I mean?”
The Judge said nothing at all; and Cotterill threw out his hands with an insinuating gesture. “Or,” he suggested, “it may be you haven’t got any loose money to put in. That’ll be all right. They’ll carry the account for you. Carry it, and take care of it and whenever they make a turnover, mail your check to you. You cash it, that’s all there is.” There was no answering gleam in the Judge’s eye; and Cotterill added hurriedly, “Maybe the notion of a check bothers you. It does leave a trail. But cash don’t. And cash can be got. There won’t be any trouble about that. Nor about how much. We’re responsible people. So are you. Come on, Bob; what’s the answer?”
The Judge said, almost abstractedly, and entirely without heat:
“You’re interesting, Jim; but you’re not convincing. You see, it just happens that I don’t take bribes.”
Cotterill twisted in his chair as though undera blow; and his fat face purpled with anger. He struck his fist upon the edge of the desk before him.
“All right! All right, Bob!” he cried hotly. “If you won’t have it in friendship, take it the other way. You can’t pull this high and mighty on me. You can’t get away with it. What are you after, anyway? I haven’t named a figure. You could have named your own, if you’d been reasonable. ’Stead of that, you’ve got to grow wings and fan ’em like an angel, or something. You can’t pull that with me, Bob. I know too much.”
“What do you know, Jim?” the Judge asked mildly.
Cotterill laughed. “Getting under your skin, am I? Thought I would. You think I’d go into this without making sure I had winning cards? I’ve looked you up, Bob. I’ve had you looked up. I know you, inside out. And I’ll tell you flat, either you come across now, or everybody’ll know you as well as we do.”
“How well do you know me?” Hosmer inquired.
The attorney held up his left hand, the fingers outspread; and he ticked off his points upon these fingers. “This well,” he declared. “Item one: You sat in the Steel case. When the decision was announced, the market went off. Robertson Brothers had you on their books, short a thousand shares. You made a nice little pile. Legal enough, maybe, Judge; but not right ethical. Would you say so?”
“Go on,” said the Judge.
The fat little man touched another finger.“Item two: Remember the Daily trial, down home. Chet Thorne. Remember him? Witness for the other side. You was defending Daily. He needed it, too. He was guilty as the devil. Chet told the truth, first trial. But you got a disagreement, just the same. Second trial, Chet lied. You got Daily off. Well, we’ve got Chet. You can’t find him, but we know where he is. And we’ve got his affidavit to why he changed his story. Oh, it was slick! Nobody could get Chet for perjury. Change didn’t amount to enough for that. But it was enough for what you needed. You got away with it then; but Chet’s ready to tell how you got away with it, now.”
He stopped again, and the Judge inquired: “Is that all?”
Cotterill shook his head. “Not quite. Item three: The matter of the Turner trust, and how it happened the trustee was short, and how the thing was covered up. You were the trustee, Bob. One, Two, Three, and there you have it.” He struck the desk again, triumph inflaming him. “Furthermore,” he cried, voice suddenly shrill. “Furthermore, the story’s ready to spring. This afternoon, petition for your disbarment was filed down home. In a sealed envelop. And the whole story back of it’s in type, right now, down town at theChronicleoffice. When I leave here, before midnight tonight, I’ll hit a telephone. If I say one word, the envelop goes into the fire and the type is pied. If I don’t say the word, the envelop’s opened in the morning, and the story’s on the street in theChroniclebefore breakfast. There’s the load, Judge.” He shrugged, his hands outspread.“Look it over. Simple enough. Be good and you’ll be happy. Now what do you say?”
For a long moment, there was silence in the quiet room; and when the Judge spoke, it was in a gentle, but a decisive tone.
“Nor I’ve never permitted myself to be blackmailed, Cotterill,” he replied.
The lawyer stormed to his feet; he threw up his hands. “All right!” he cried. “Then it’s bust for you.”
The Judge nodded. “Maybe,” he agreed. “Of course, this is old stuff. A little of it true, and a good deal of it lies. Dates back ten—twelve years. Maybe you can make it go. I don’t know. But I do know one thing, Jim. I know you’re a dirty specimen.” There was, abruptly, a hot ring in his tones.
Cotterill cried: “That’ll do! You’re through. No man can talk to me that way....”
Hosmer’s long arm shot out; his fingers twisted into the other’s collar. “Talk to you? Talk to you?” he repeated quietly. “Why, Jim, I aim to do considerable more than talk to you.” His right hand swung; he slapped the squirming man across the cheek. Swung and cuffed Jim Cotterill to and fro in a cold fire of rage....
Urged him toward the door; half dragged, half thrust, half threw him down the stairs; spurred his tumultuous exit from the house. A last stinging blow, and: “Git,” he said.
Cotterill was gone.
The Judge’s wife had come into the hall. Hosmer slowly shut the door, and he rubbed his hands as though they were soiled. There was trouble in his eyes, where the anger died.
Mary Hosmer touched his arm; asked softly: “What is it, Bob?”
He looked down at her; slowly shook his head. “Trouble, Mary,” he said frankly. “He wanted to beg, or buy, or steal the Furnace case. They’ve raked up those old affairs. TheChroniclewill print the whole business in the morning. He’s gone to release the story now. I guess folks will walk right by and never see us, tomorrow, Mary.”
Comprehension came swiftly into her eyes; she cried rebelliously: “You’ve lived those old tales down, Bob!” He shook his head. “Anyway,” she told him, “I’m glad you—kicked him out as you did.”
The Judge nodded. Then a slow smile crept into his eyes. “Matter of fact, Mary,” he said, “this affair has its funny side.”
“Funny?” she echoed.
“Yeah.”
“Why....”
“I’d written my decision before he came upstairs,” he explained. “I’d already decided the way he wanted me to.”
Little old Bob Dungan, his coat off, his sleeves rolled to the elbow so that they revealed the red-woolen underwear which he habitually wore, sat at his typewriter in the furthest corner of the noisy City Room and rattled off a cryptic sentence. He wrote:
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
Now this is not a piece of information calculated to interest more than a baker’s dozen of the half million readers of a metropolitan daily such as that which Bob served. The sentence as a sentence has but one virtue; it contains all of the letters of the alphabet. That is all you can say for it. Nevertheless, having written the words, Bob studied them profoundly, ticking off with his pencil each letter, from A to Izzard, and when he was done, counted those that still remained.
“Nine,” he said, half aloud. And he scratched his head. “Ought to get it under that.” He put a fresh sheet in the typewriter and prepared to try again. To the casual eye of any one who might be watching from across the room, he looked like a very busy man.
As a matter of fact, this was exactly the impression Bob wished to convey. He was anxious to appear busy and indispensable. For little old Bob Dungan was desperately afraid of being fired.
A newspaper staff is built to meet emergencies. That means that, left to itself, it inevitably becomes top-heavy, and on days when news is slack, the City Room is half full of men waiting for an assignment that never comes. When such a condition develops, the veterans in the office know what will follow. Some fine morning, the publisher drifts down stairs and sees the idle men—idle because there is nothing for them to do. And that afternoon, the order comes to cut the staff, cut to the bone.
So faces once familiar begin to disappear. The latest comers are the first to go, and only unusual ability will save them. Then the less efficient among the regulars are dropped, and finally, in drastic cases, those oldtimers who have begun to slow down. There was once a Saturday afternoon when from a single City Room twenty-two men were discharged, and the work went on, Monday morning, just the same. Men who have seemed indispensable disappear—and leave no more of a hole than your finger leaves in a bucket of water. The young reporters take these episodes gaily, as a part of the game; those more experienced accept misfortune with what resignation they can muster. But in the case of a man who has served the paper for ten or fifteen or twenty years, the moment has its black and tragic side.
Old Bob Dungan was wise enough to know the signs. Three weeks before two young reporters had disappeared. A week after, five men were“let go.” Last Saturday seven old friends had stopped at his desk to say goodby. And this morning, his half-admitted apprehensions had been brought to focus. Fear had set its grip on him....
Dade, the City Editor, a driver of a man who was himself driven by a fierce affection for the paper which he served, was standing at Bob’s desk, and they were talking together when Boswell, the publisher, came in from the elevator. And Dade—the man had a kindly, human streak in him which some people never discovered—whispered out of the side of his mouth to Bob:
“Look out, old man. For God’s sake, look busy as hell!”
Then he went across to meet Boswell; and Bob began to write on his machine, at top speed, over and over again:
“Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. Now is the time for all good men to come....”
He shifted, after a while, to the other: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Meaningless enough; but Bob hoped, with all his trembling soul, that he was succeeding in looking busy. He was, as has been said, afraid of being fired.
Bob could not afford to be fired. He had been a newspaper reporter all his life, and always would be. His salary had always been small, and always would be. His savings were spasmodic, disappearing like snow patches on a sunny daybefore the occasional emergencies of life, and emergencies insisted on arising. Emergencies do arise, when a man has a family. Just now, for example, his wife was only two days out of hospital, and the bill unpaid.... No, he could not afford the luxury of being fired.
So fear scourged and shook him. It was physical; there were certain muscular and nervous reactions that went with it. His heels, tucked under his chair, felt naked and chilled by the little currents of air that circulated along the floor. His bowels were sick within him, as though there were an actual, ponderable weight in his mid-section. His ears, attuned to what went on in the room behind him, seemed unnaturally enlarged, and there were pricklings in his scalp.
He had known fear before. Such dull periods come to every newspaper office. But Bob had always pulled through, escaped discharge. He had worked at this same desk for a dozen years.... Had come here from theJournal, feeling a little proudly that he was taking an upward step, beginning at last to climb. It had meant more money. Thirty-five dollars a week. He was getting forty, now. So little, yet enough to make a man a coward.
Bob had never been fired from any job. The process of discharge was cloaked, in his thoughts, with an awful mystery. Sometimes men found a note, in a blue envelope, in their mail boxes; sometimes Dade called them to him, spoke to them, explained the necessity which forced him to let them go. They took it variously; defiantly, calmly, humbly, as their natures dictated. But it had never happened to Bob....
He was afraid, these days, to go to his box for mail lest the dreaded note be there; and when Dade stopped at his desk or called him across the room he cringed to his very soul with dread. He was, no doubt of it at all, an arrant and an utter coward.
So he sat, this morning, and wrote, over, and over again:
“Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. Now is the....” Or shifted, and tapped off: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” He was still thus occupied when Dade called from his broad desk by the window:
“Bob!”
The little old man looked fearfully around, and Dade beckoned. Bob’s heart dropped into his boots; he was fairly white with fear. Perhaps Boswell had told Dade to let him go....
Nevertheless, he faced the music. Got up and went across the room toward where the City Editor was standing. And he managed a smile. Beat down his panic and smiled.
Dade kept him waiting. The City Editor was giving some instructions to Ingalls, the City Hall man. Bob, his thoughts misted and confused by his own apprehensions, nevertheless heard what Dade was saying, and subconsciously registered and filed it away.
“ ...going to start something,” Dade explained to Ingalls. “Mr. Boswell is interested, so you want to get results. The Building Department has been slack. Not inspectors enough, maybe. Fire Department, too. There were two girls caught in that fire in the South End ten days ago. Got out, I know, but it was luck. We’re going tocover every fire, from now on. Going to watch the fire-escapes and the fire-doors and get the goods on this bunch, if they’ve been falling down. You keep it to yourself, but see what you can dig up. There must be stuff filed, up there. I’ll let you know.... Don’t make any breaks till you hear from me, but keep on the job....”
Bob listened, finding some relief from his own apprehensions in doing so. “Another crusade ...” he thought, idly. Abruptly, Dade dismissed Ingalls and turned to him, and Bob turned pale, then colored with relief when he understood that Dade simply wished to give him an assignment.
“Jack Brenton,” Dade said, in the staccato sentences which were his habit. “We hear his wife has run away from him. He lives out in Hanbridge. Here’s the address. I sent the district man over. He says Brenton’s drunk. Threatened to shoot him. You’ll have to handle him right. Jack’s a bruiser, looking for trouble. Ask him if it’s true his wife’s gone. Ask him who she went with, and why, and what he’s going to do about it. Telephone me.”
Bob nodded. “All right,” he said quickly. “I’ll phone in.” He swung back to his desk for coat and hat, eager to be away, eager to be out of the office and away from present peril.
Outside the building, Bob headed for the subway. He had no qualms at the thought of Jack Brenton and his drunken pugnacity. Bob was an old hand, a good leg man, a competent reporter.He had handled angry husbands many times. He could handle Brenton.
Yet he might have been forgiven for being afraid to encounter Jack Brenton. The man was a professional pugilist of some local note, and his record was bad. He had once, by ill luck, killed an opponent in the ring; he was known to possess a sulky temper that flamed to murderous heat, and it was said of him that when he was in his cups, he was better left alone.... He was in his cups this morning. Bob knew this as soon as he heard the other’s sulky shout that answered his knock at the apartment door. The prize-fighter yelled: “Come in!” And Bob went in.
Inside the door there was a little hallway, with a bathroom opening off one side, and a living-room at the end. Brenton came into this passage from the living-room as Bob entered from the hall, and they met face to face. Brenton looked down at the little man; and he asked suspiciously:
“What’re you after?”
“Dungan’s my name,” said Bob pleasantly. “I’m from theChronicle.”
He saw the other’s scowl deepen. “I said what I’d do.... Next damn reporter came out here. What you want, anyway?”
“I want to ask you a few questions. About your wife....”
The pugilist dropped his hand on little Bob Dungan’s shoulder. His left hand. His right jerked into sight with a revolver; he thrust the muzzle of it into Bob’s face. “You smell that,” he cried, truculently. “I’ll blow your damn head off.”
Bob—laughed. “Why, that’s all right,” he replied. If he had squirmed, struggled, or even if he had been afraid, the other’s drunken anger might have given him strength to shoot. There was very real and deadly peril in the situation. But Bob, unafraid, laughed; and the prize-fighter could see that there was no fear in the little man’s eyes. “That’s all right,” said Bob. “Go ahead.”
Brenton did not shoot. He hesitated uncertainly, his slow wits wavering. And Bob asked sympathetically:
“Did she treat you pretty bad?”
“Bad?” Brenton echoed. “Why, the things she’s done to me—Why, say....”
“That’s tough,” the reporter murmured.
The fighter’s grip on his shoulder relaxed; the big man’s arm slid around Bob’s neck. He became maudlin and unhappy, weeping for sympathy. “Why, you jus’ lemme tell you....” he begged.
“Sure,” Bob agreed. “Tell me all about it. Let’s go in and sit down.”
They went into the living-room. “Y’see, it was this way....” the pugilist began.
When Bob left the prize-fighter, he called the office and reported to Dade. “Dungan speaking,” he said.
“What you got?” Dade asked hurriedly.
“Jack Brenton. Got his story. About his wife. Good stuff....”
Dade interrupted. “Never mind that now,” hedirected. “There’s a big fire in that block of lofts on Chambers Street. Hop a taxi and get there quick as you can. Get busy, Bob.”
Bob said crisply: “‘Right!” He heard the receiver click as Dade hung up. Five minutes later he had located a taxi and was racing toward the fire. As he drew near, he saw the column of smoke that rose from the burning building, black against the sky. “Two or three alarms,” he estimated, out of his long experience in such matters. “Lot of girls working in there, too. Probably caught some of them. Damned rat-hole....”
He had not enough cash in his pocket to pay the taxi fare; so he showed the man his badge and said curtly: “ChargeChronicle.” Then he began to worm through the crowd toward the fire. His badge passed him through the fire-lines, into the smother of smoke and the tumult of voices and the throbbing rhythm of the engines. The loft building was five stories high; and when Bob looked up, he saw, as the smoke thinned and left vistas, the red of flames in every window on the upper floors. Beside an empty hose-wagon, he came upon Brett of theJournal, and asked him: “Anybody caught!”
Brett shook his head. “Seven rescues,” he said. “Fire started on the top floor, so they mostly had time to run.”
“Got the names?” Bob asked.
“Jake’s got ’em,” said Brett. Jake was theChronicle’spolice reporter. “He’s gone to telephone them in.”
Bob nodded. Jake was a good man. He would have picked up enough of incident and accident tomake a story. The rewrite men in the office would do the rest. His, Bob’s, job was to look for a feature the other men might have overlooked.... And abruptly, he remembered Dade’s instructions to Ingalls that morning. Fire escapes; fire-doors. Were they adequate, on this old trap?
There was an alley beside the burning building. He could work in through there and find out, perhaps.... At the mouth of the alley a policeman halted him. Bob showed his fire badge. The policeman said scornfully: “I don’t give a damn for that. That wall in there is going to fall in a minute.”
Bob laughed. “I was covering fires when you were in the cradle, old man,” he said, and slipped by, into the alley. The officer started to pursue, swore, changed his mind, returned to his post. The alley was not an attractive place to enter. It was full of smoke, and sprinkled with bits of glass that still tinkled down in a steady rain from the shattered windows above; and as he had said, the upper part of the wall had been gnawed by the fire till it was like to fall at any moment.
In spite of this, Bob went in. He was not afraid, and he was not excited, and he was not valorous. He was simply matter of fact. The smoke made him cough, and burned his eyes. Nevertheless he located the fire-escape, where it came zigzagging down the wall. Its ladder swung seven feet above the sidewalk. He got a barrel and climbed upon it and so reached the ladder.
He scaled the ladder to the second floor landing. He found there a blank, iron-sheathed door. Locked. He could not move it. “But it probablyopens from the inside,” he reminded himself. “Let’s see.”
There was no window on this floor; he looked up and discovered that from the landing above he could reach a window. Flames were streaming thinly out of windows ten feet above that landing. Nevertheless, Bob did not hesitate. He climbed, straddled the iron rail, kicked in a pane of glass and pushed the sash up. The room within was full of eddying smoke; Bob crawled inside. He wished to reach the hall, test the doors that opened upon the fire-escape from the inside.
Smoke in the room was thick, so he crouched below it and slipped out into the hall. When he reached the door, he found it adequately equipped with patent bolts of the sort that yielded at a tug. He tried them; the door swung open. The bolts, he saw, were recently installed and in good condition.... The open door had created a draft. Smoke, with a hot breath of fire in it, began to pour past him and out through the door.
Fire-escapes all right; doors all right. No story. Time to get out, he decided.
To do so it was necessary to traverse the building. He did this. Bob had seen fires before. Experience and instinct guided him safely. On the stairs he found lines of hose leading up to where a squad of firemen were fighting the fire from within. He followed the hose down and to the front door and so to the street.
The fire, for newspaper purposes, was over. Three alarms, seven rescues, a hundred thousand damage.... Bob telephoned the office. Dade asked: “How about fire-escapes?”
“I looked at them,” Bob said casually. “They’re O. K. Fire-doors all right, too.” Dade said: “Well, you might as well come in.”
Bob brushed his clothes and washed his face and hands in a hotel wash-room before he returned to the office. When he came into the City Room, no one paid him any attention. He went to his desk and wrote the story of Jack Brenton’s wife, and handed the manuscript to Dade. The City Editor scanned the pages with swift eyes, said over his shoulder: “Good stuff, Bob.” Then tossed the story to the copy-desk. “Top 7,” he directed. “Good little local story. But you’d better cut it down. Half a column’s enough.”
Bob went back to his desk. He was beginning to feel the reaction; he was somewhat tired. So for a little while he sat idly, doing nothing at all.
Then Boswell, the publisher, came in from the corridor; and Bob saw him, and turned to his typewriter, and inserted a sheet of paper, and began to write. He wrote, over and over again:
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
The little old reporter wished to appear busy. He was, you see, a good deal of a coward; he was desperately afraid of being fired.
THIS is, in all essentials, a true story. It came through an old friend from the Southwest, a newspaper man, who telephoned an invitation to lunch the other day. He says he remembers, as a boy, seeing the whole population of his home town embark on horseback, in wagons, and afoot to go to the hanging. That was in 1881; but it was not till twenty years afterward that he heard from one Chris O’Neill the true inwardness of that hanging, as he told it to me over our coffee. The thing happened in a little frontier town in the cow country; and since swift justice and a ready rope were characteristics of the time and the place, it occasioned only passing comment in that day. Nevertheless, the tale may well bear preserving.
I cannot hope to reproduce my friend’s words, nor the atmosphere of those reckless times, so long dead, which he brought back to life for me. Nevertheless, here is the substance of the story that he told.
There were two cowboys in the O K O outfit, otherwise called the Hourglass; and these two men were pardners. This, I was given to understand, is a very different thing from being partners. In France, a few years ago, they would have called themselves “buddies.” The relationship is the same, though it appears under another name. The two men were named Jack Mills and Bud Loupel. If you hired one, you hired both. If one was fired, the other quit. If you licked one, the other licked you; and if one became involved in a shooting affray, the other was apt to be somewhere in the background with a gun in his hand and an eye out for possible sharp practice by allies of the party of the second part. The foreman of the Hourglass, being wise in his generation, assigned the two to tasks at which they could work together; and they stayed with that outfit for a length of time that was considered extraordinary in those tempestuous days. That is to say, they labored in the vineyard for the O K O for a matter of a year and a half. At the end of that time Jack Mills was twenty-one and Bud Loupel was twenty-two.
As they did their work jointly, so they took their pleasures together; and it came to pass on a certain day that they rode away to town with full pockets and lively plans for the evenings immediately before them. Jack Mills, always the gayer spirit of the two, pulled his gun at the edge of town and perforated the blue sky above him. At the same time he emitted certain shrill sounds and spurred his horse to the gallop. Bud was more given to a certain sobriety and decorum; he did not shoot and he did not yell. But his horse kept close beside the other’s. They swung into the wide and dusty main street with hats flapping, horses racing like jack rabbits, holsters poundingagainst their thighs. They swept up the street together, saw the same vision at the same instant, and jerked their horses to a sliding, tail-grinding stop with a single movement of their bridle hands.
The vision’s name was Jeanie Ross. She was the daughter of old man Ross, the storekeeper, and she had just come home from the East. The rattle of the shots had brought her to the door of the store, and she stood there when the two cowboys discovered her. She looked at them; they stared at her. Then Jack Mills swung boldly to the ground and walked toward her, grinning in his pleasantly likable way. He swept his wide hat low, and he said: “Ma’am, I’m Jack Mills of the Hourglass.”
The girl, though she had lived long in the East, was a daughter of the West. She was amused and not displeased, for Jack was easy enough to look at. She smiled, and this emboldened Bud Loupel, who was always conservative, to imitate his pardner’s example. He, too, dismounted and stepped forward, and Jack Mills bowed again to the girl and told her: “Furthermore, ma’am, this here is my bashful friend, Bud Loupel. The cat has got his tongue, but he’s a nice little fellow. Now you know everybody worth knowing.”
Jeanie Ross, still very much amused, asked: “Who were you shooting at?”
“The man in the moon,” said Jack Mills. “But I missed him a mile.”
She laughed and said she was glad of that. “I’d hate not to be able to see him up there once in a while,” she told Jack.
“Just to prove he ain’t hurt,” he assured her,“I’ll ride in and point him out to you when the signs is right.”
She shook her head, looking from one man to the other, withdrawing a little into the doorway. Jack marked, even then, that her eyes rested longest on Bud Loupel. “I’ve studied astronomy my own self,” she said, and while he was still crushed by that she backed into the store and disappeared.
The two mounted in silence and continued more demurely down the street. In front of Brady’s they hitched their horses, tramped dustily inside, and touched elbows at the bar. The first drink was taken without speech; the second followed it.
After a while Bud Loupel said: “Jack!”
“Huh?”
“Me, you know what I aim to do?”
Mills grinned. “I don’t know, but I’m waiting.”
“I aim,” said Bud Loupel, “to quit the range and get me a job in this here little old town.”
Jack Mills banged his open hand upon the bar. “Bud, she sure is that and more,” he cried. “Just make it the same for me.”
They had ridden into town, as has been said, with full pockets. They had expected to ride out again in a day or two with empty ones. But the encounter with Jeanie Ross and their subsequent abrupt decision made all the difference in the world. The procedure of each one, in the circumstances, was characteristic. Bud Loupel crossed the street to the bank and opened an account, depositing his money. Jack Mills went into Brady’s back room, where there was a bank of another kind, and set to work to double his.
The bank Bud patronized was owned by Sam Rand, who was also cashier, president, and board of directors. There had been, till some three days before, a teller, but Rand had let him go. Bud found the banker, as a consequence, up to his eyes in unaccustomed work. Rand knew Loupel, knew that the cowboy had a certain aptitude for figures. When Bud, in the casual talk that followed his deposit, mentioned the fact that he was hunting for a town job, Rand hired him on the spot.
An hour or so later Bud went back to Brady’s to tell Jack of his good fortune, and Mills rolled a cigarette and said cheerfully: “Then you’re fixed to lend me five dollars.”
“As quick as this?” Bud asked. “You must have picked ’em mighty scant.”
“I didn’t pick them,” Jack told him. “They picked me.”
They went out together and sought a restaurant and food. By supper time Jack had a job in the blacksmith shop. He was as good with horses as Bud was with figures. That evening they hired a room, and Bud wrote a note to the Hourglass foreman, telling him not to expect them back again. Then they settled down to live the life of sober and substantial citizens. Object matrimony.
Now, this is not a story of how a woman came between two men and turned good friends into enemies. Jeanie Ross did nothing of the kind. It is a fact that they both loved her and that they both wooed her, but it is also a fact that they continued to be pardners just the same. And it is furthermore true that when Jeanie made up her mind between them, Jack was the first one she told.
She told him she was going to marry Bud. And Jack rolled a cigarette with both hands, slowly and with care; he fashioned it neatly, and stroked it between his fingers, and twisted the ends and lighted it before he spoke at all.
“Said so to him?” he asked then.
Jeanie shook her head. “No. I wanted you to know first, because I want you and Bud to keep on being friends. I like you, Jack. But you’re—flighty. Bud’s steady. You’re more amusing sometimes, but he’s more reliable. I couldn’t ever really count on you. I can count on Bud, Jack. But you will go on being friends with him, won’t you? That’s why I’m telling you.”
“He’s steady, he’s reliable, and you can count on him,” Jack repeated, ticking the points off upon his fingers. “Now, is there maybe any other little thing besides?”
“Yes,” said Jeanie softly. “Yes. I love him, Jack.”
He flicked his cigarette away. “Keno!” he exclaimed. “And Bud’s a good scout too. I don’t reckon you’ll ever need to be sorry at all.” He picked up his hat and started away.
“Where are you going?” she asked softly, and there were tears in her eyes for him.
“I aim to tell Bud you’re a-waiting,” he said.
And he did. Bud was working late that night at the bank. Jack bade him go and find her. “And, Bud,” he warned good-humoredly, “I’ll aim toperforate you, sudden and complete, if you don’t name the first after me.”
When Bud was gone Jack stood very still for a while, whistling a little tune between his teeth. Then he went across to Brady’s and had a drink or two, but the liquor would not bite. It was still early in the evening when he sought the room he shared with Bud, and went to bed. Bud, returning two hours later, undressed quietly, because he thought his pardner was asleep.
But Jack Mills was not asleep.
The first was a boy, and was well and duly named Jack Loupel; and Uncle Jack used to go to the house for Sunday dinner and play bear all over the floor of the sitting room. The next was a girl, and the next was a boy again. Bud was by that time cashier of the bank, and Sam Rand left most of the work to him. Jack Mills was just what he had always been; that is to say, a likable, wild young chap with a quick gun and a reckless eye and a fondness for the society he found at Brady’s. Sometimes, after eating one of Jeanie’s dinners, he would take his horse and ride out of town and be gone for a day or two. He was always alone on these excursions; but ranging cowboys came across him now and then and reported that he seemed to be just sitting around, smoking, doing nothing at all. When he got ready he would drift back into town and go to work again. Old man Ross liked him; Jeanie liked him; everybody liked him. But the sober citizens were also inclined to disapprove of him; and some of the stories that came to Jeanie’s ears made her think that when the children were a little older she had better quit asking Jack to come to the house. She hated to think of doing this; and because she was kind of heart, it is unlikely that she would ever have come to the actual point. But that the possibility should occur to her is some measure of the man’s standing in the town.
One day, about seven years after Bud and Jeanie were married, Bud sought out Jack Mills and asked him to get his horse and come for a ride. “Want to tell you something, Jack,” he explained.
Mills saw the trouble and distress in the other’s eyes, so he saddled up, and they trotted out of town. When the last building was well behind them, Jack asked mildly: “What’s on your mind, Bud?”
Bud Loupel, with some hesitation, said: “I’m in trouble.”
“Yeah! I judged so,” Mills told him. “Well, what brand?”
“I’ve been putting money in the market at Wichita,” Loupel said. “I’ve had rotten luck. It’s gone.”
Jack nodded. “I got three-four hundred in the bank,” he suggested. “Take that.”
“It’s not enough.”
“Maybe I could look around and raise five hundred more.”
“It wouldn’t do a bit of good.”
Mills produced tobacco and papers and rolled a slow cigarette while their horses jogged along. At last: “How much?” he asked.
“Forty-four hundred.”
“You’ve saved a right smart, ain’t you?”
“It’s the bank’s,” Loupel confessed, and Jack puffed deeply and expelled the smoke in a cloud and remarked:
“Well, at a guess, I’d say you were a damned fool.”
“I know it.”
Their horses plodded on, and the dust cloud rose and hovered in the air behind them. For a space neither man spoke at all. Then Loupel bitterly exclaimed: “I’m not whining for my own sake, Jack. If it was me, I’d hop out. I’d take a chance. But Jeanie....”
“Sure,” Jack Mills mildly agreed. “Sure.”
“Damn it, Jack, Jeanie’s proud of me. She’s proud of me.”
“Yeah!”
“I can’t bear to think of her knowing. It would just about bust her.”
Mills drawled: “Your sentiments does you credit, Bud.”
There was a cold and scornful anger in his tone that kept the other for the moment silent. They rode on, side by side, and Loupel, covertly watching the younger man, waited for him to speak. Mills finished his cigarette, eyes straight before him, face unchanging. Then he flicked the butt away and turned in his saddle and looked at his pardner.
“What’s Rand say?” he asked.
“He’s been away. Due back to-morrow afternoon. He’ll spot it in a minute.”
Mills whistled for a moment, between his teeth,a gallant little tune; then he nodded, as though in decision, and he asked: “All right, Bud. What’s your idea?”
While they rode on at the trot toward the low hills south of the town Bud Loupel outlined his idea; and when they turned back again at sunset Jack had agreed to do what the other asked of him.
At ten o’clock next morning the town lay still and shimmering in the blistering sun of a summer day. There were one or two men in Brady’s, and here and there along Main Street other figures lounged in the shade. Jack Mills rode in from the south on a strange horse, wearing new overalls and an indistinguishable hat. There was a red bandanna loosely knotted about his neck. He encountered no one within recognizing distance. In front of the bank he dropped off, hitched the horse, lifted the handkerchief so that it hid his mouth and nose, and stepped into the building. Two or three people at some distance saw him go in, and idly wondered who the stranger was.
He had hoped to find Loupel alone in the bank; but Jim Paine was there. Paine had just cashed a check and stood with his back toward the door, talking to Bud. When Bud saw the masked man he turned pale, and Jim marked the change in his countenance and whirled around. But Jack’s gun was leveled, so Bud and Jim Paine reached for the ceiling.
Mills, with some attempt to disguise his voice,said harshly to Bud: “Paper money. All of it. Quick!”
Loupel, hands still in the air, started toward the safe. Jack looked that way and saw that the safe door was open. He changed his mind.
“Wait,” he commanded. With a gesture he bade Paine face the wall. Then he leaped the counter, motioned Loupel aside, and himself approached the safe. Paine, watching sidewise, saw the masked man drag out half a dozen packets of bills and stuff them into the front of his shirt. Mills did this with his left hand; his right hand held the gun, and his eyes covered Paine and Loupel almost constantly. Loupel, backed into a corner, watched in silence.
When Mills had taken what he came for, he rose and turned toward the counter again. At that instant a gun roared behind him, and something tugged at his shirt, under the left arm. He whirled, saw Rand standing in the back door of the bank building. Rand’s gun was going. Jack fanned his hammer twice, and the banker fell.
Paine had not moved. Mills swung, half crouching, toward Loupel. Loupel had double-crossed him. That was the thought that tightened his finger on the trigger. But—Jeanie! That was the thought which made his trigger finger relax. He slid across the counter, made the door in one jump. Five seconds after his shot, his horse was galloping out of town. And as he passed the last house a rifle spoke, somewhere behind him.
Half a mile from town he looked back and saw three or four horsemen just emerging from MainStreet. On their heels others appeared. He laughed a grim little laugh, and slid forward in his stirrups to help his horse to greater speed. But when he reached the hills, some half a dozen miles south of town, they were close behind him, and their rifles were reaching out for him. He knew a certain cave, a narrow, shallow cover. Poor refuge, but better than none.
In this cave they brought him to bay. He lay prone behind the bowlder that screened and half closed the entrance, and watched them draw off and circle to inclose him. “Got a little while,” he said to himself. “Fireworks won’t start right away.”
Satisfied of this, he rolled a little on his side and drew from the front of his shirt the packages he had taken from the safe. Strictly in line with Bud Loupel’s well-laid plan, these were simply dummy packets of waste paper, with a genuine bill on the outside of each bundle. Mills laid them on the ground and studied them thoughtfully, considering their significance.
His situation was sufficiently desperate. Rand was dead. He had no doubt of that, and he regretted it. He had always liked Rand, but there had been no choice at the moment. The question was, what next! These fake bundles of money had their place in the scheme of things. If he kept them, told the true story, they might well save his life. Frontier justice was swift, but it was also tempered by considerations not accepted under a more rigid system of law. If he proved Bud Loupel’s part in this, Bud would be damned, and he might himself be saved. And the dummy bundleswould prove Bud’s guilty foreknowledge of the robbery.
A rifle bullet spattered on the rock above him, and he postponed decision. “Needs thinking over,” he told himself. “We’ll see what we will see.”
They held him in siege all that afternoon, and toward sunset brought a barrel of kerosene from town. Men climbed the hill above the cave, where the bullets could not reach them, and poured this oil so that it ran down into a pool just in front of his retreat. Then they set fire to it. He saw at once that he could not endure the smoke and gas, and after some preparations shouted his surrender.
They bade him come out with his hands in the air, and he did so. His boots were somewhat scorched by the flames. Then they tied his hands behind his back and his ankles beneath the horse’s belly, and took him back to town. Toward dusk he was lodged in the calaboose there, and Nick Russ, the deputy, went on guard outside.
About nine o’clock that night Bud Loupel came to the calaboose and asked if he could talk with Mills. Russ told him to go ahead. Bud asked permission to talk privately; and, though Russ was inclined to protest, he was at length persuaded. The deputy moved away from the little, one-room building, and Bud went inside. Mills was confined in a rude cell of two-by-four timbers.Bud approached these bars, and Jack came to meet him.
Loupel was sweating faintly. “For God’s sake, Jack,” he whispered. “This is terrible!”
Mills grinned. “Well,” he agreed. “It looks right critical to me.”
“If Rand hadn’t happened to get back ahead of time.... Hadn’t come in right then....”
“You didn’t happen to know he was coming, I don’t reckon.”
Loupel cried: “No, no, Jack. Honest to God!”
Mills nodded. “I know. I thought at first you did; but I reckon you wouldn’t play it that low down. Is he—hurt much?”
“Oh, you got him.”
“Yeah,” said Mills. “Well, that’s tough, too. When is it going to happen to me?”
“To-morrow morning.”
“They’re right prompt, ain’t they?”
Loupel gripped the stout timbers to stop the trembling of his hands. There was a terrible and pitiful anxiety in his voice. “Jack!” he whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Have you told?”
Mills turned his head away; he could not bear to look upon this old friend of his. “Why, no,” he said gently. “No, Bud, I ain’t told. Don’t aim to, if that helps any.”
“But the money,” Bud stammered. “The packages of bills. You couldn’t get rid of them. When they find them, they’ll know.”
“They won’t find them bundles,” Jack Mills told him; and, while Bud could only stare withwidening eyes, he cheerfully explained: “You see, I was cold for a spell. So I had me a little bonfire in that cave.”
There was something hideous and craven in the relief that leaped into the eyes of Bud Loupel. Mills reached through the bars, caught the other’s shoulder, shook him upright. “Take a brace, Bud,” he said gently. “Go on home.”
Bud Loupel could not speak. He turned and went stumbling toward the door; he forgot so little a thing as shaking his pardner’s hand in farewell. Jack watched him go; and as the other reached the door he called:
“Take care of Jeanie, Bud.”
Loupel turned to look back, muttered a low assent, went on his way. Mills heard him speak to Russ as he departed. Then the deputy came to look in and make sure that the prisoner was still secure. He resumed his seat on a chair tipped against the wall, just outside the door.
Mills went back to the bench against the rear of his cell and rolled and smoked a cigarette. Then he lay down, one knee crossed above the other, and the man on guard heard him whistling.
Heard him whistling softly, between his teeth, a gay and gallant and triumphant little tune.
ERNIE BUDDER was a leading member of a profession not always given its just due—that is to say, he was an expert washer of automobiles. You have seen his like in your own service-station, garbed in rubber boots and rubber apron, a long-handled soapy brush in one hand, and the ragged end of a line of hose without a nozzle in the other. But unless you have attempted on your own account the task he so expeditiously performs, you have never properly appreciated this man. By the time you have run water over your car, only to find that it dries in muddy spots upon the varnished surface; by the time you have wet it again and wiped it hurriedly, and found the result suggestive of the protective coloration of a zebra; by the time you have for a third time applied the hose, and scrubbed with the sponge, and wiped with the chamois, and picked off with your fingernails the lint and dust that still persist in sticking, you will have begun to value at their true worth such men as Ernie Budder.
Ernie could and did wash and polish a car an hour, with monotonous regularity, all day long. For this work he was paid a dollar an hour, whichseems munificent until you have tried it, and until you stop to consider that, for the work he has done, you paid his employer three dollars, and until you remember the cost of living and such matters not easy to forget.
He was a fixture at my particular service-station, where his abilities were recognized by the powers that were. If you ran your car in and said confidentially to Forgan, the foreman: “Give her an extra good going-over, will you? I’ve been out on some muddy roads, and she needs it,” then Forgan would nod, and promise reassuringly, “I’ll see to it that Ernie does her himself, boss.” Upon which, if you knew Ernie and trusted Forgan, you went away completely at your ease.
Ernie was not a young man, in spite of his youthful appellation. I suppose his name had once been Ernest. He was past middle life—how far past it was hard to guess. His hair was snow-white, and his square shoulders were a little stooped, but his hands were vigorous and his eye was mild and clear. There was a diffident affability about him, an amiability like that of a puppy which is afraid of being misunderstood; and, as a result of this quality, it is probable that he was somewhat put upon by the more aggressive characters among whom his lines were laid. My acquaintance with him was a matter of slow growth over a period of years. What might be called our friendship dated from the day when Ernie whispered to me that there had been a small leak in my radiator. I nodded abstractedly.
“Thanks,” I told him. “I’ll run her in to-morrow and let them patch it up.”
He shook his head.
“Don’t need to,” he told me. “I stuck a drop of solder on her to-day. Gave it a lick of enamel. You’ll never notice the place at all.”
I stifled my natural suspicion—for I did not know the man—and pulled out a bill; but Ernie smiled and backed away.
“No, no,” he said pleasantly. “No; I like to tinker. Don’t let Forgan know. That’s all.”
I was a little dazed, would have insisted. But in the face of his persistent, good-natured refusal, I perceived that I had been mistaken. The man was not a type; he was an individual. And thereafter we became, as I have suggested, friends. If there was a grease-cup missing when he washed the car, I was sure to find it replaced. If my brakes needed adjusting, he found time to attend to them. A surface-cut on a tire that passed under his hands was apt to be filled with cement and composition and firmly closed. I eventually discovered that this habit was no secret to Forgan.
“He thinks we ain’t wise,” the foreman said to me. “But I’ve spotted him at it. Long as he does them things on his own time, why should we kick? We don’t want to soak our customers. We’re human, ain’t we? Besides, it makes ’em good-natured. And Ernie likes to think he’s putting something over. So I don’t let on.”
But it was not that Ernie liked to think he was putting something over; it was simply, as the man had told me, that he liked to tinker. I was not alone in his favor. Others also benefited. He was a friend of all the world.
I missed him one day when I drove in and left the car. Forgan laughed at my question.
“Yep,” he said. “Gone. Got a vacation. Guy came in here—one of these movie men. Spotted Ernie, and said he wanted him for a picture. Said he looked the part. He’ll be back in a month or so. ’Less he gets the bug.”
I was interested, and a little amused at the thought of Ernie on the film; and I hoped he would come back at the end of the stipulated month, hoped he would, in fact, escape the bug.
As matters chanced, it was two weeks over the allotted month before I had occasion to take my car to the service-station. I drove in on my way to town in the morning, and Forgan slid back the doors for me, and Ernie’s familiar smile, a little more alert than of old, greeted me from the washing-floor.
“Just a wash and a polish,” I told Forgan, as I rolled past him at the door; and he nodded and said,
“Give her to Ernie.”
I maneuvered in the narrow passage and headed in to the washing-floor; but Ernie held up a warning hand, smiling and nodding.
“Cut her,” he called. “Over this side.”
And as I obeyed, wondering what it was all about, I saw that he cocked a wise eye toward the ceiling. Under his guidance, I brought the car into the position he desired, and then alighted and asked:
“What’s the idea, Ernie! Used to be any old place would do.”
Ernie chuckled.
“Look a’ there,” he admonished, and pointed upward. “There’s an arrangement I’ve fixed up. Just shut up your windows and you’ll see.”
Mine is a sedan; I obediently closed windows and doors.
“Rigged her myself,” Ernie repeated. “Just three-four lengths of pipe and a punch. Works great on a closed car.” And he yanked at the long wooden pole which opened the water-valve against the ceiling.
That which Ernie had indicated so pridefully was a rectangle of two-inch pipe, hung in such position that it was just above the roof of the car. When the valve was opened, from this pipe through numberless orifices descended a veritable water-curtain composed of many tiny streams. The water struck upon the top of the car and flowed down over front and rear and sides in sheets.
“Wets her and rinses her all at once,” Ernie pointed out to me. “Saves a lot of time, and does a sight better job. I rigged her.”
He was, as I have said, immensely proud—proud as a child. The idea was undoubtedly ingenious, and I told him so.
“I got a lot of ideas,” he assured me. “I’m figuring on them.”
I nodded.
“How’d you like the movies?” I asked.
“Great!” he said. “Say, I want to tell you—”
But I was already overdue at the office, and Imade my excuses to the old man. Another time, I said, would do. He agreed, as he always agreed, and I left him at work upon the car. Forgan, at the door, winked in his direction as I passed, and asked,
“Do you make him?”
“Why?” I inquired. “What do you mean?”
“You watch the old coot,” Forgan admonished me. “He’s a new man.”
I heard from Ernie, and in fragmentary snatches, the story of his moving-picture experience. There was a studio in one of the more remote suburbs, the plant of a fly-by-night company of none too good repute. The director of this company it was who had enticed Ernie away.
“They wanted me,” he told me seriously one day, “because I looked so much like Tom Edison. Didn’t you ever notice that?”
I did not smile, for Ernie was perfectly sober. But that this washer of automobiles was even remotely like the great inventor seemed to me a ridiculous suggestion. It was true that Ernie had white hair, had a round and placid face; but there was in his countenance none of that strength which is so evident in the other’s. I told myself that it was possible the picture-people were wiser than I, that under the lights and with a touch of makeup here and there—
“A war-film, it was,” Ernie assured me. “I was the big man in it.”
“So?” I prompted.
“Yeah. Inventor. Working on a new torpedo thing. Spies after it, trying to get it from me. They had me working in a shop with barred windows and a steel door and a guard outside. Had a bed there. Slept there. In the picture, you understand. Ate there and everything. People’d come to see me, and I’d show ’em how the thing worked. I was the big man in that picture, I’ll tell you.”
“That must have been an interesting experience,” I suggested.
He nodded, started to speak, but an expression curiously and almost ludicrously secretive crossed his countenance. He held his tongue, turned back to his task in a manner almost curt.
I drove out, and just outside the door—this was in January, and there was snow upon the streets—one of my chains flipped off. Forgan’s hail of warning stopped me, and he shut the door and came out to help me adjust the chain.
“I see Ernie telling you about his movie,” he said, as we worked. And I was surprised, for the man’s tone was perfectly respectful.
“Yes,” I replied. “He seems to take it seriously.”
“Well, now, you know,” Forgan told me, “it’s made a big change in Ernie.”
“Change?” I blew upon my cold fingers and fumbled at the chains.
“Yes. He never had much git-up to him before. But now he’s full of ideas. Rigged that water-curtain to wash the cars. Things like that. Good ideas, too.”
My interest was caught.
“A real inventor?”
“You’d be surprised. He took him two of these here electric pads that you sleep on when you got the lumbago, and made a bag of them, just right to fit round the carbureter and the manifold of his old flivver; and he keeps her all warm at night from the light-socket. No heat in his garage. No starter on his car; but he says she starts at the first whirl now.”
“That’s pretty good,” I agreed. “More power to him. I’ve no heat, either. Use one of those electric things under the hood; but Ernie’s notion is better.”
“Get him to make you one,” Forgan advised. And, the chain adjusted, I stepped in and drove away.
I was able, thus prompted by Forgan, to mark the development in Ernie during the succeeding weeks. He became steadily more alert of eye, and at the same time more confident of his own powers. One day in early spring I drove in and remarked that I had dropped a grease-cup off the forward right-hand spring.
“I’ll stick one on,” he promised. “One around here somewheres.” And added, “You won’t be using them things any more in a year or two.”
“I suppose you’re right. They’ll do away with them somehow,” I agreed.
“They won’t,” said Ernie. “But I will.”
“You’ve got a scheme? Automatic lubrication?”
“Better than that,” he told me.
“Better?”
“I’ll show you one o’ these days,” he promised. But would say no more.