第75章 CHAPTER XV THE "HERO" AND THE COWBOY(3)

The two were shouting at each other. Captain Sol stood it for a while and then commanded silence.

"Stop your yellin'!" he ordered. "What ails you fellers? Think you can prove it better by screechin'? They can hear you half a mile. There's Cornelius Rowe standin' gawpin' on the other side of the street this minute. He thinks there's a fire or a riot, one or t'other. Let's change the subject. See here, Bailey, didn't you start to tell us somethin' last time you was in here about your ridin' in an automobile?"

"I started to--yes. But nobody'd listen. I rode in one and I sailed in one. You see--"

"I'm goin' outdoor," declared Barzilla.

"No, you're not. Bailey listened to you. Now you do as much for him. I heard a little somethin' about the affair at the time it happened and I'd like to hear the rest of it. How was it, Bailey?"

Captain Stitt knocked the ashes from his pipe.

"Well," he began, "I didn't know the critter was weak in his top riggin' or I wouldn't have gone with him in the fust place. And he wa'n't real loony, nuther. 'Twas only when he got aboard that--that ungodly, kerosene-smellin', tootin', buzzin', Old Harry's gocart of his that the craziness begun to show. There's so many of them weak-minded city folks from the Ocean House comes perusin' 'round summers, nowadays, that I cal'lated he was just an average specimen, and never examined him close."

"Are all the Ocean House boarders weak-minded nowadays?" asked the depot master.

Mr. Wingate answered the question.

"My land!" he snapped; "would they board at the Ocean House if they WA'N'T weak-minded?"

Captain Bailey did not deign to reply to this jibe. He continued calmly:

"This feller wa'n't an Ocean Houser, though. He was young Stumpton's automobile skipper-shover, or shofer, or somethin' they called him. He answered to the hail of Billings, and his home port was the Stumpton ranch, 'way out in Montana. He'd been here in Orham only a couple of weeks, havin' come plumb across the United States to fetch his boss the new automobile. You see, 'twas early October. The Stumptons had left their summer place on the Cliff Road, and was on their way South for the winter. Young Stumpton was up to Boston, but he was comin' back in a couple of days, and then him and the shover was goin' automobilin' to Florida. To Florida, mind you! In that thing! If it was me I'd buy my ticket to Tophet direct and save time and money.

"Well, anyhow, this critter Billings, he ain't never smelt salt water afore, and he don't like the smell. He makes proclamations that Orham is nothin' but sand, slush, and soft drinks. He won't sail, he can't swim, he won't fish; but he's hankerin' to shoot somethin', havin' been brought up in a place where if you don't shoot some of the neighbors every day or so folks think you're stuck up and dissociable. Then somebody tells him it's the duckin' season down to Setuckit P'int, and he says he'll spend his day off, while the boss is away, massycreein' the coots there. This same somebody whispers that I know so much about ducks that I quack when I talk, and he comes cruisin' over in the buzz cart to hire me for guide. And--would you b'lieve it?--it turns out that he's cal'latin' to make his duckin' v'yage in that very cart. I was for makin' the trip in a boat, like a sensible man, but he wouldn't hear of it.

"'Land of love!' says I. 'Go to Setuckit in a automobile?'

"'Why not?' he says. 'The biscuit shooter up at the hotel tells me there's a smart chance of folks goes there a-horseback. And where a hoss can travel I reckon the old gal here'--slappin' the thwart of the auto alongside of him--'can go, too!'

"'But there's the Cut-through,' says I.

"''Tain't nothin' but a creek when the freshet's over, they tell me,' says he. 'And me and the boss have forded four foot of river in this very machine.'

"By the 'freshet' bein' over I judged he meant the tide bein' out.

And the Cut-through ain't but a little trickle then, though it's a quarter mile wide and deep enough to float a schooner at high water. It's the strip of channel that makes Setuckit Beach an island, you know. The gov'ment has had engineers down dredgin' of it out, and pretty soon fish boats'll be able to save the twenty-mile sail around the P'int and into Orham Harbor at all hours.

"Well, to make a long story short, I agreed to let him cart me to Setuckit P'int in that everlastin' gas carryall. We was to start at four o'clock in the afternoon, 'cause the tide at the Cut-through would be dead low at half-past four. We'd stay overnight at my shanty at the P'int, get up airly, shoot all day, and come back the next afternoon.

"At four prompt he was on hand, ready for me. I loaded in the guns and grub and one thing or 'nother, and then 'twas time for me to get aboard myself.

"'You'll set in the tonneau,' says he, indicatin' the upholstered after cockpit of the concern. I opened up the shiny hatch, under orders from him, and climbed in among the upholstery. 'Twas soft as a feather bed.

"'Jerushy!' says I, lollin' back luxurious. This is fine, ain't it?'

"'Cost seventy-five hundred to build,' he says casual. 'Made to order for the boss. Lightest car of her speed ever turned out.'

"'Go 'way! How you talk! Seventy-five hundred what? Not dollars?'

"'Sure,' he says. Then he turns round--he was in the bow, hangin' on to the steerin' wheel--and looks me over, kind of interested, but superior. 'Say,' he says, 'I've been hearin' things about you.

You're a hero, ain't you?'

"Durn them Orham gabblers! Ever sence I hauled that crew of seasick summer boarders out of the drink a couple of years ago and the gov'ment gave me a medal, the minister and some more of his gang have painted out the name I was launched under and had me entered on the shippin' list as 'The Hero.' I've licked two or three for callin' me that, but I can't lick a parson, and he was the one that told Billings.