Page:The Country Boy.djvu/103

Rh or other he always wagged at me, notwithstanding the effort.

It was winter and raining hard one night about eight-thirty, when I was in Wolfard’s store. John Wolfard was huddling around the store dreading to make the dash for home. We were talking about the opportunities of Silverton in general, when he said, “The trouble ain’t with Silverton; it’s with you boys. There ain’t any of you got any enterprise. For instance, there is old Bob. I don’t want to kill him and still he ought to be put out of his misery, and I have offered any of you boys time and again all the crackers and sardines you can eat if Bob disappears. All I want to know is that he is gone and gone for good, and I don’t want to hear the particulars.”

I looked down by my chair, and there he sat oily and fat, as sleek as a seal. I looked over behind the counter where they kept the sardines and they looked pretty good. I got up and sorter stretched, when John Wolfard, lighting a new cigar, said, “It’s enterprise that you boys lack, the town’s all right.”

I went into the back part of the store where