The Skipper and the Skipped, Holman Day [book recommendations for teens TXT] 📗

ain't no iron-clad, Kun'l Ward," muttered Sproul. "I'll hold ye next time."
He set to work on the river-bank that afternoon, cutting saplings, trusting to the squall of the faithful parrots to signal the approach of passers.
But the next day, when he was nailing the saplings to make a truly Brobdingnagian grid, one of the directors of the bridge company appeared to him.
"We're not giving you license to let any one run toll on this bridge, you understand," said the director, "but this fighting Colonel Ward with our property is another matter. It's like fighting a bear with your fists. And even if you killed the bear, the hide wouldn't be worth the damage. He has got too many ways of hurting us, Cap'n. He has always had his own way in these parts, and he probably always will. Let him go. We won't get the toll, nor the fines, but we'll have our bridge left."
"I was thinking of resigning this job," returned the Cap'n; "it was not stirrin' enough for a seafarin' man; but I'm sort of gittin' int'rested. How much will ye take for your bridge?"
But the director curtly refused to sell.
"All right, then," said the skipper, chocking his axe viciously into a sapling birch and leaving it there, "I'll fill away on another tack."
For the next two weeks, as though to exult in his victory, the Colonel made many trips past the toll-house.
He hurled much violent language at the Cap'n. The Cap'n, reinforced with his vociferous parrots, returned the language with great enthusiasm and volubility.
Then came the day once more when the little woman sat down in a chair in the shade of the woodbine.
"I took the first chance, Cap'n, while my brother has gone up-country, to come to tell you how much I appreciate your generous way of doing what I asked of you. You are the first man that ever put away selfish pride and did just what I asked."
The seaman started to repudiate vigorously, but looked into her brimming eyes a moment, choked, and was silent.
"Yes, sir, you're what I call noble, not to pay any attention to the boasts my brother is making of how he has backed you down."
"He is, is he?" The Cap'n rolled up his lip and growled.
"But I know just how brave you are, to put down all your anger at the word of a poor woman. And a true gentleman, too. There are only a few real gentlemen in the world, after all."
The Cap'n slid his thumb into the armhole of his waistcoat and swelled his chest out a little.
"There was no man ever come it over me, and some good ones have tried it, ma'am. So fur as women goes, I ain't never been married, but I reckon I know what politeness to a lady means."
She smiled at him brightly, and with such earnest admiration that he felt a flush crawling up from under his collar. He blinked at her and looked away. Starboard, with an embarrassing aptness that is sometimes displayed by children, whistled a few bars of "A Sailor's Wife a Sailor's Star Should Be."
"I don't mind owning up to you that my brother has imposed upon me in a great many ways," said the little lady, her eyes flashing. "I have endured a good deal from him because he is my brother. I know just how you feel about him, Cap'n, and that's why it makes me feel that we have a--a sort of what you might call common interest. I don't know why I'm talking so frankly with you, who are almost a stranger, but I've been--I have always lacked friends so much, that now I can't seem to help it. You truly do seem like an old friend, you have been so willing to do what I asked of you, after you had time to think it over."
The Cap'n was now congratulating himself that he hadn't blurted out anything about the bridge director and that sapling fence. It certainly was a grateful sound--that praise from the pretty lady! He didn't want to interrupt it.
"Now will you go on with that story of the storm?" she begged, hitching the chair a bit nearer. "I want to hear about your adventures."
She had all the instincts of Desdemona, did that pretty little lady. Three times that week she came to the toll-house and listened with lips apart and eyes shining. Cap'n Sproul had never heard of Othello and his wooing, but after a time his heart began to glow under the reverent regard she bent on him. Never did mutual selection more naturally come about. She loved him for the perils he had braved, and he--robbed of his mistress, the sea--yearned for just such companionship as she was giving him. He had known that life lacked something. This was it.
And when one day, after a stuttering preamble that lasted a full half hour, he finally blurted out his heart-hankering, she wept a little while on his shoulder--it being luckily a time when there was no one passing--and then sobbingly declared it could never be.
"'Fraid of your brother, hey?" he inquired.
She bumped her forehead gently on his shoulder in nod of assent.
"I reckon ye like me?"
"Oh, Aaron!" It was a volume of rebuke, appeal, and affection in two words.
"Then there ain't nothin' more to say, little woman. You ain't never had any one to look out for your int'rests in this life. After this, it's me that does it. I don't want your money. I've got plenty of my own. But your interests bein' my interests after this, you hand ev'rything over to me, and I'll put a twist in the tail of that Bengal tiger in your fam'ly that 'll last him all his life."
At the end of a long talk he sent her away with a pat on her shoulder and a cheery word in her ear.
It was Old Man Jordan who, a week or so later, on his way to the village with butter in his bucket, stood in the middle of the road and tossed his arms so frenziedly that Colonel Ward, gathering up his speed behind the willows, pulled up with an oath.
"Ye're jest gittin' back from up-country, ain't ye?" asked Uncle Jordan.
"What do you mean, you old fool, by stoppin' me when I'm busy? What be ye, gittin' items for newspapers?"
"No, Kun'l Ward, but I've got some news that I thought ye might like to hear before ye went past the toll-house this time. Intentions between Cap'n Aaron Sproul and Miss Jane Ward has been published."
"Wha-a-at!"
"They were married yistiddy."
"Wha--" The cry broke into inarticulateness.
"The Cap'n ain't goin' to be toll-man after to-day. Says he's goin' to live on the home place with his wife. There!" Uncle Jordan stepped to one side just in time, for the gaunt horse sprung under the lash as though he had the wings of Pegasus.
The Cap'n was sitting in front of the toll-house. The tall horse galloped down the hill, but the Colonel stood up, and, with elbows akimbo and hands under his chin, yanked the animal to a standstill, his splay feet skating through the highway dust. The Colonel leaped over the wheel and reversed his heavy whip-butt. The Cap'n stood up, gripping a stout cudgel that he had been whittling at for many hours.
While the new arrival was choking with an awful word that he was trying his best to work out of his throat, the Cap'n pulled his little note-book out of his pocket and slowly drawled:
"I reckoned as how ye might find time to stop some day, and I've got your account all figgered. You owe thirteen tolls at ten cents each, one thutty, and thirteen times three dollars fine--the whole amountin' to jest forty dollars and thutty cents. Then there's a gate to--"
"I'm goin' to kill you right in your tracks where you stand!" bellowed the Colonel.
The Cap'n didn't wait for the attack. He leaped down off his porch, and advanced with the fierce intrepidity of a sea tyrant.
"You'll pay that toll bill," he gritted, "if I have to pick it out of your pockets whilst the coroner is settin' on your remains."
The bully of the countryside quailed.
"You've stole my sister!" he screamed. "This ain't about toll I'm talkin'. You've been and robbed me of my sister!"
"Do you want to hear a word on that?" demanded the Cap'n, grimly. He came close up, whirling the cudgel. "You're an old, cheap, ploughed-land blowhard, that's what you are! You've cuffed 'round hired men and abused weak wimmen-folks. I knowed you was a coward when I got that line on ye. You don't dast to stand up to a man like me. I'll split your head for a cent." He kept advancing step by step, his mien absolutely demoniac. "I've married your sister because she wanted me. Now I'm goin' to take care of her. I've got thutty thousand dollars of my own, and she's giv' me power of attorney over hers. I'll take every cent of what belongs to her out of your business, and I know enough of the way that your business is tied up to know that I can crowd you right to the wall. Now do ye want to fight?"
The tyrant's face grew sickly white, for he realized all that threat meant.
"But there ain't no need of a fight in the fam'ly--and I want you to understand that I'm a pretty dum big part of the fam'ly after this. Be ye ready to listen to reason?"
"You're a robber!" gasped the Colonel, trying again to muster his anger.
"I've got a proposition to make so that there won't be no pull-haulin' and lawyers to pay, and all that."
"What is it?"
"Pardnership between you and me--equal pardners. I've been lookin' for jest this chance to go into business."
The Colonel leaped up, and began to stamp round his wagon.
"No, sir," he howled at each stamp. "I'll go to the poor-farm first."
"Shouldn't wonder if I could put you there," calmly rejoined the Cap'n. "These forced lickidations to settle estates is something awful when the books ain't been kept any better'n yours. I shouldn't be a mite surprised to find that the law would get a nab on you for cheatin' your poor sister."
Again the Colonel's face grew white.
"All is," continued the Cap'n, patronizingly, "if we can keep it all in the fam'ly, nice and quiet, you ain't goin' to git showed up. Now, I ain't goin' to listen to no more abuse out of you. I'll give you jest one minute to decide. Look me in the eye. I mean business."
"You've got me where I'll have to," wailed the Colonel.
"Is it pardnership?"
"Yas!" He barked the word.
"Now, Colonel Ward, there's only one way for you and me to do bus'ness the rest of our lives, and that's on the square, cent for cent. We might as well settle that p'int now. Fix up that toll bill, or it's all off. I won't go into business with a man that don't pay his honest debts."
He came forward with his hand out.
The Colonel paid.
"Now," said the Cap'n, "seein' that the new man is here, ready to take holt, and the books are all square, I'll ride home with you. I've been callin' it home now for a couple of days."
The new man at the toll-house heard the Cap'n talking serenely as they drove away.
"I didn't have any idee, Colonel, I was goin' to like it so well on shore as I do. Of course, you meet some pleasant and some unpleasant people, but that sister of yours is sartinly the finest woman that