Captain Jinks, Hero, Ernest Howard Crosby [free e books to read TXT] 📗

up if he’d go to the Cubapines. Maybe that isn’t true, but they say so.”

“I venture to say that it is a mistake,” said Sam, who had been much pained by the conversation. “Young men who are so patriotic in the hour of need must be men of high character.”

“Maybe they are and maybe they aren’t,” replied the insurance agent, “but old Mrs. Crane told me she was going to buy chickens again next week for her chicken-yard. There was so many stolen last year that she gave up keeping them, but next week she’s beginning again, and next week the Thatchers are going away. It’s a coincidence, anyhow.”

“Oh, boys will be boys,” said Reddy. “When they get a good pension they’ll be just as respectable as you or me. Here comes Tom Slade now, and Josh Thatcher, too.”

The door had opened, and through the smoke Sam descried two young men, one a slight wiry fellow, the other a large, broad-shouldered, fair-haired man with a dull expression of the eye.

“Who says ‘drinks all around’?” cried the former. “Everybody’s blowing us off now.”

“Here,” said Jackson, waking up, “I’ll do it, hanged if I don’t. You fellows are a-goin’ to civilize the Cubapinos, and you deserve all the liquor you can carry.”

He got up and approached the bar and the crowd followed him, and soon everyone was supplied with some kind of beverage.

“Here’s to Thatcher and Slade! May they represent Slowburgh honorably in the Cubapines and show ’em what Slowburghers are like,” said Jackson, elevating his iced cocktail.

The health was heartily drunk.

“And here is to that distinguished officer, Captain Jinks. Long may he wave!” cried old Reddy.

“Speech, speech!” exclaimed the convivial crowd.

“Gentlemen,” responded Sam, “I am a soldier and not an orator, but I am proud to have my name coupled with those of your honored fellow townsmen. It is a sign of the greatness of our country that men of just the same character are in all quarters of this mighty republic answering their country’s call. Soon we shall have the very pick of our youth collected on the shores of these ungrateful islanders who have turned against their best friends, and these misguided people will see for themselves the fruits of our civilization as we see it, in the persons of our soldiers. Permit me in responding to your flattering toast to propose the names of Mr. Reddy and Mr. Tucker as representatives of an older generation of patriots whose example we are happy to have before us for our guidance.”

This, Sam’s first speech, was received with great applause, and then Josh Thatcher proposed three cheers for Captain Jinks, which were given with a will. The only perverse spirit was that of the commercial traveler, who had sat in the corner reading an old copy of the Slowburgh Herald, and now on hearing the cheers, took a candle and went upstairs to bed.

“That man’s no good,” said Reddy with a shake of his head. While the whole company were expressing their concurrence with this sentiment, Sam bade them good night and took his leave.

VI Off for the Cubapines

By the next morning’s mail Sam’s commission arrived, and with it orders to report at once at the city of St. Kisco, whence a transport was about to sail on a date which gave Sam hardly time to catch it. He must hurry at once to town and get his new uniforms for which he had been fitted the week before, and then proceed by the fastest trains on the long journey to the distant port without even paying his parents a farewell visit. He found Cleary busily engaged in making his final arrangements, and persuaded him to cut them short and travel with him. Sam had hardly time to take breath from the moment of his departure from Slowburgh to the evening on which he and Cleary at last sat down in their sleeping-car. His friend heaved a deep sigh.

“Well, here we are actually off and I haven’t got anything to do for a change. This is what I call comfort.”

“Yes,” said Sam, “but I wish we were in the Cubapines. This inaction is terrible while so much is at stake. It’s a consolation to know that I am going to help to save the country, but it is tantalizing to wait so long. Then in your own way you’re going to help the country too,” he added, thinking that he might seem to Cleary to be monopolizing the honors.

“I’ll help it by helping you,” laughed Cleary. “I’ve got another contract for you. You see the magazines are worth working. They handle the news after the newspapers are through with it, and they don’t interfere with each other. So I got permission to tackle them from The Lyre, and I saw the editor of Scribblers’ Magazine yesterday and it’s a go, if things come out as I expect.”

“What do you mean?” asked Sam.

“Why, you are to write articles for them, a regular series, and the price is to be fixed on a sliding scale according to your celebrity at the time of each publication. It won’t be less than a hundred dollars a page, and may run up to a thousand. It wouldn’t be fair to fix the price ahead. If the articles run say six months, the last article might be worth ten times as much as the first.”

“Yes, it might be better written,” said Sam.

“Oh, I don’t mean that. But your name might be more of an ad by that time.”

“I’ve never written anything to print in my life,” said Sam, “and I’m not sure I can.”

“That doesn’t make any difference. I’ll write them for you. You might be too modest anyhow. I can’t think of a good name for the series. It ought to be ‘The Autobiography of a Hero,’ or ‘A Modern Washington in the Cubapines,’ or something like that. What do you think?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Sam. “I must leave