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

"Me put on an ap'un, and go out there, and kitchen-wallop for that jimbedoggified junacker of a tin-peddler? I'll burn this old shack down first, I will, by the--"
But Hiram entered fervent and expostulatory appeal.
"If you don't, we're sendin' that talkin'-machine on legs off to sue and get damages, and report this tavern from Clew to Hackenny, and spoil our chances for a customer, and knock us out generally."
He put his arm about the indignant Cap'n and drew him in where the loafers couldn't listen, and continued his anxious coaxings until at last Cap'n Sproul kicked and stamped his way into the kitchen, cursing so horribly that the cat fled. He got a little initial satisfaction by throwing after her the dirty dishes in the sink, listening to their crashing with supreme satisfaction. Then he proceeded to get supper.
It had been a long time since he had indulged his natural taste for cookery. In a half-hour he had forgotten his anger and was revelling in the domain of pots and pans. He felt a sudden appetite of his own for the good, old-fashioned plum-duff of shipboard days, and started one going. Then gingercake--his own kind--came to his memory. He stirred up some of that. He sent Hiram on a dozen errands to the grocery, and Hiram ran delightedly.
"I'll show you whether I can cook or not," was the Cap'n's proud boast to the showman when the latter bustled eagerly in from one of his trips. He held out a smoking doughnut on a fork. "There ain't one woman in ten can fry 'em without 'em soakin' fat till they're as heavy as a sinker."
Hiram gobbled to the last mouthful, expressing his admiration as he ate, and the Cap'n glowed under the praise.
His especial moment of triumph came when his wife and Mrs. Look, adventuring to seek their truant husbands, sat for a little while in the tavern kitchen and ate a doughnut, and added their astonished indorsement. In the flush of his masterfulness he would not permit them to lay finger on dish, pot, or pan.
Hiram served as waiter to the lonely guest in the dining-room, and was the bearer of several messages of commendation that seemed to anger the Cap'n as much as other praise gratified him.
"Me standin' here cookin' for that sculpin!" he kept growling.
However, he ladled out an especially generous portion of plum-duff--the climax of his culinary art--and to his wrathful astonishment Hiram brought it back untasted.
"Mebbe it's all right," he said, apologetically, "but he was filled full, and he said it was a new dish to him and didn't look very good, and--"
The Cap'n grabbed the disparaged plum-duff with an oath and started for the dining-room.
"Hold on!" Hiram expostulated; "you've got to remember that he's a guest, Cap. He's--"
"He's goin' to eat what I give him, after I've been to all the trouble," roared the old skipper.
Mr. Brackett was before the fire in the office, hiccuping with repletion and stuffing tobacco into the bowl of his clay pipe.
"Anything the matter with that duff?" demanded the irate cook, pushing the dish under Mr. Brackett's retreating nose. "Think I don't know how to make plum-duff--me that's sailed the sea for thutty-five years?"
"Never made no such remarks on your cookin'," declared the guest, clearing his husky throat in which the food seemed to be sticking.
"Hain't got no fault to find with that plum-duff?"
"Not a mite," agreed Mr. Brackett, heartily.
"Then you come back out here to the table and eat it. You ain't goin' to slander none of my vittles that I've took as much trouble with as I have with this."
"But I'm full up--chock!" pleaded Mr. Brackett. "I wisht I'd have saved room. I reckon it's good. But I ain't carin' for it."
"You'll come out and eat that duff if I have to stuff it down your thro't with the butt of your hoss-whip," said the Cap'n with an iciness that was terrifying. He grabbed the little man by the collar and dragged him toward the dining-room, balancing the dish in the other hand.
"I'll bust," wailed Mr. Brackett.
"Well, that bump will make a little room," remarked Cap'n Sproul, jouncing him down into a chair.
He planted one broad hand on the table and the other on his hip, and stood over the guest until the last crumb of the duff was gone, although Mr. Brackett clucked hiccups like an overfed hen. The Cap'n felt some of his choler evaporate, indulging in this sweet act of tyranny.
Resentment came slowly into the jovial nature of meek Todd Ward Brackett. But as he pushed away from the table he found courage to bend baleful gaze on his over-hospitable host.
"I've put up at a good many taverns in my life," he said, "and I'm allus willin' to eat my fair share of vittles, but I reckon I've got the right to say how much!"
"If you're done eatin'," snapped the Cap'n, "get along out, and don't stay round in the way of the help." And Mr. Brackett retired, growling over this astonishing new insult.
He surveyed the suspended alligator gloomily, as he stuffed tobacco into his pipe.
"Better shet them jaws," he advised, "or now that he's crazy on the plum-duff question he'll be jamming the rest of that stuff into you."
"You can't say outside that the table ain't all right or that folks go away hungry under the new management," remarked Hiram, endeavoring to palliate.
"New management goin' to inorg'rate the plum-duffin' idee as a reg'lar system?" inquired Mr. Brackett, sullenly. "If it is, I'll stay over to-morrow and see you operate on the new elder that's goin' to supply the pulpit Sunday--pervidin' he stays here."
Hiram blinked his eyes inquiringly. "New elder?" he repeated.
"Get a few elders to put up here," suggested Mr. Brackett, venomously, "and new management might take a little cuss off'm the reppytation of this tavern." And the guest fell to smoking and muttering.
Even as wisdom sometimes falls from the mouths of babes, so do good ideas occasionally spring from careless sarcasm.
After Mr. Brackett had retired Hiram discussed the matter of the impending elder with Cap'n Sproul, the Cap'n not warming to the proposition.
"But I tell you if we can get that elder here," insisted Hiram, "and explain it to him and get him to stay, he's goin' to look at it in the right light, if he's got any Christian charity in him. We'll entertain him free, do the right thing by him, tell him the case from A to Z, and get him to handle them infernal wimmen. Only an elder can do it. If we don't he may preach a sermon against us. That'll kill our business proposition deader'n it is now. If he stays it will give a tone to the new management, and he can straighten the thing out for us."
Not only did Cap'n Sproul fail to become enthusiastic, but he was so distinctly discouraging that Hiram forbore to argue, feeling his own optimistic resolution weaken under this depressing flow of cold water.
He did not broach the matter the next morning. He left the Cap'n absorbed and busy in his domain of pots, set his jaws, took his own horse and pung, and started betimes for the railroad-station two miles away. On the way he overtook and passed, with fine contempt for their podgy horse, a delegation from the W.T.W.'s.
On the station platform they frowned upon him, and he scowled at them. He realized that his only chance in this desperate venture lay in getting at the elder first, and frisking him away before the women had opportunity to open their mouths. A word from them might check operations. And then, with the capture once made, if he could speed his horse fast enough to allow him an uninterrupted quarter of an hour at the tavern with the minister, he decided that only complete paralysis of the tongue could spoil his plan.
Hiram, with his superior bulk and his desperate eagerness, had the advantage of the women at the car-steps. He crowded close. It was the white-lawn tie on the first passenger who descended that did the business for Hiram. In his mind white-lawn ties and clergymen were too intimately associated to admit of error. He yanked away the little man's valise, grabbed his arm, and rushed him across the platform and into the pung's rear seat. And the instant he had scooped the reins from the dasher he flung himself into the front seat and was away up the road, larruping his horse and ducking the snow-cakes that hurtled from the animal's hoofs.
"Look here! I--I--" gasped the little man, prodding him behind.
"It's all right, elder!" bellowed Hiram. "You wait till we get there and it will be made all right. Set clus' and hold on, that's all now!"
"But, look here, I want to go to Smyrna tavern!"
"Good for you!" Hiram cried. "Set clus' and you'll get there!" It seemed, after all, that ill repute had not spread far. His spirits rose, and he whipped on at even better speed.
"If this isn't life or death," pleaded the little man, "you needn't hurry so." Several "thank-you-marms" had nearly bounced him out.
"Set clus'," advised the driver, and the little man endeavored to obey the admonition, clinging in the middle of the broad seat.
Hiram did not check speed even on the slope of the hill leading into the village, though the little man again lifted voice of fear and protest. So tempestuous was the rush of the pung that the loafers in Broadway's store hustled out to watch. And they saw the runners strike the slush-submerged plank-walk leading across the square, beheld the end of the pung flip, saw the little man rise high above the seat with a fur robe in his arms and alight with a yell of mortal fright in the mushy highway, rolling over and over behind the vehicle.
Helping hands of those running from the store platform picked him up, and brought his hat, and stroked the slush out of his eyes so that he could see Hiram Look sweeping back to recover his passenger.
"You devilish, infernal jayhawk of a lunatic!" squealed the little man. "Didn't I warn you not to drive so fast?"
Hiram's jaw dropped at the first blast of that irreligious outbreak. But the white-lawn tie reassured him. There was no time for argument. Before those loafers was no fit place. He grabbed up the little man, poked him into the pung, held him in with one hand and with the other drove furiously to the tavern porch. With equal celerity he hustled him into the office.
"You ain't in any condition to talk business jest now till you're slicked off a little, elder," he began in tones of abject apology.
"You bet your jeeroosly life I'm not!" cried the little man in a perfect frenzy of fury.
Again Hiram opened his mouth agitatedly, and his eyebrows wrinkled in pained surprise. Yet once more his eyes sought the white tie and his hand reached for the little man's arm, and, feeling at a loss just then for language of explanation, he hurried him up-stairs and into a room whose drawn curtains masked some of its untidiness.
"You wash up, elder," he counselled. "I won't let anybody disturb you, and then whatever needs to be explained will be all explained. Don't you blame me till you know it all." And he backed out and shut the door.
He faced the Cap'n at the foot of the stairs. The Cap'n had been watching intently the ascent of the two, and had gathered from the little man's scuffles and his language that he was not a particularly enthusiastic guest.
"They come hard, but we must have 'em, hey?" he