Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/221

Rh an old man, and a shrewd old man; being old, he had lost his best vigor; being shrewd he did not deceive himself. His heart did not falter and he tried to see clearly, but he read in those contented feet a barrier against which any javelin he might hurl in the cause of right would crumple and fall.

The morning freight came down and John Taylor and Black Joe, who had swung aboard at Seven Mile, dropped off and walked up First Street, Taylor looked into the Banner office.

"Have dinner with us?" he asked.

"No thanks, Taylor. Chained to the desk today."

There was no laugh in the blue eyes and they did not rest long on Taylor's face. They were fixed on those feet in that court house window.

John and Black Joe went on.

"Chained to his desk," Black Joe muttered and laughed, "An' his eyes glued on that damn tin court house!"

They entered the poolroom. It was a dingy, smelly place, with two battered tables on a littered floor that still bore the faint marks of river boots. The cigar case was fly specked and broken and patched. There was a dusty one-eyed deer on the wall beside a lithograph of a fat-legged girl in red stockings, and a dirty-faced clock. A stuffed owl stared fixedly from the opposite wall and there was a faded photograph of the Blueberry, jammed with pine logs over which rivermen posed self-consciously.

Joe eyed the stock of cigars.

"What seegar is it Jim Harris smokes?" he asked. "He give me one onct—"

"This one, Joe," the greasy-faced proprietor said. "Fifteen centers. Good stuff, that; none better. Jim