Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/319

 The arrival of the mail with its exchanges interrupted thoughts flowing in a dangerous channel.

The soaring price of wool, featured in the headlines, caught his attention instantly, since, naturally, anything that pertained to the sheep industry was of interest to the community. Mr. Butefish used his scissors freely and opined that the next issue of the Grit would be a corker. Then an idea came to him. Why not make it a sheep number exclusively? Give all the wool-growers in the vicinity a write-up. Great! He'd do it. Mr. Butefish enumerated them on his fingers. When he came to Kate Prentice, he hesitated. Would Prouty stand for it— the eulogy he contemplated? In a small paper one had to consider local prejudices—besides, she was not a subscriber.

While Mr. Butefish debated, a spirit of rebellion rose within him. Ever since he had established the paper he had been a worm, and what had it got him? It had got him in debt to the point of bankruptcy—that's what it had got him—and he was good and sick of it! He was tired of grovelling—nauseated with catering to a public that paid in rutabagas and elk meat that was "spoilin' on 'em." He hadn't started in right—that was half the trouble. If he had dug into their pasts and blackmailed 'em, they'd be eating out of his hand, instead of pounding on the desk in front of him if he transposed their initials. He would have been a power in the country in place of having to drag his hat brim to 'em, lest they take out their advertisement of a setting of eggs or a Plymouth Rock rooster.

He'd show 'em, by gorry! He'd show 'em! Mr. Butefish jabbed his pen into the potato he used as a pen-wiper, instead of the ink, in his fury. He wrote with the rapidity of inspiration, and words came which he had not