Tom Jarnagan, Junior/Chapter 6

came up the walk jauntily, like a man who is on good terms with himself and with the world at large. It was a fresh, clean morning after the storm, and he had keenly enjoyed the early drive from town. Aaron Simpson met him at the door with a gruff "Good morning," and led the way to the dismantled sitting-room.

"Fine morning, Mr. Simpson," Manville began, seating himself on the edge of a half-filled packing-case. "Getting ready for the journey, are you?"

The farmer said "Yes," rather crustily.

"Sold off all your stock?"

"'Bout all I ain't goin' to take along."

Manville had not expected a very warm welcome at the hands of Jarnagan's outspoken friend; but as Simpson's manner was so plainly antagonistic, he thought it best to come at once to the business affair.

"I know you're Jarnagan's friend, Mr. Simpson, but you mustn't let that fact prejudice you. Nobody thinks more of Mr. Jarnagan, personally, than I do; though, of course, we're always at war in a business way. I mention this because I came out this morning at Judge Sloan's special request to bring you a bit of news which changes the situation very materially."

The farmer nodded, and Manville went on:

"There have been heavy storms in the West, and it says in the paper Jarnagan's road is in trouble. I had preferred not to use this as an argument, simply because accidents are liable to happen on any line." "Don't beat the bushes," said Simpson, briefly.

"I sha'n't. Since it's in the newspaper, it is public property and I am free to use it. The paper says the Colorado East & West is tied up with washouts, and that our line has been requested to carry the Utah business until further notice."

There was a slight noise in the adjoining room, but Manville did not remark it. Aaron Simpson thrust out his jaw and, looking Manville in the eye, said an impolite thing: "I don't believe it."

Manville was suavity itself. "Naturally; I don't blame you. It seems too well-timed. But I brought the paper so you could see for yourself."

The farmer took the paper, adjusted his spectacles, and read the report with wooden impassiveness.

"Is that your news?" he demanded, frowning at the young man over his glasses.

"Yes."

"Got to go your way, whether we want to or not?"

"I'm afraid that's about the size of it."

Simpson returned the "Argus." "That's just where you're a leetle grain mistaken, Mr. Manville. Me and my crowd'll wait till t' other road's fixed up."

"But, Mr. Simpson—"

"Hold up a minute and let me talk awhile. Maybe I can show you why some of us people wouldn't ride over your road, even on free passes," interrupted the farmer. "Yesterd'y you fixed up a trick to run Mr. Jarnager's boy off to Monkton, so's to get him out of your way. Don't you deny it, because I know you did. Well, that boy rid and tramped his way back to the head o' Carroll Bay last night, and took old man Lackner's skifft to row over to Richville just as the storm was comin' up. This morning the boat turns up two mile below here, half full o' water, one oarlock busted and the oar gone. I want to know who's responsible."

Manville came down from his perch on the packing-case as if it had been suddenly electrified. "Good heavens, Mr. Simpson! you don't mean to say that the boy is drowned!"

"Figger it out for yourself," said the farmer, coolly. But Manville was too genuinely shocked to do anything of the sort, or even to reflect that Aaron Simpson knew that which could have been told him only by Tom himself. Snatching his hat, he fled without another word; and when Tom burst into the sitting-room, Manville's buggy was a vanishing-point on the shore road.

Aaron Simpson was chuckling softly in his beard; but Tom was too much excited by what he had heard to appreciate that Manville had been caught by his own trick.

"Where's that paper, Mr. Simpson?" he gasped.

"I gave it back to him after I'd read it."

"Did it say what he said—that our road's washed out?" demanded Tom.

"That's what it said."

Tom groaned. "Then we're done up, after all! Did anybody ever see such luck as I have had?"

That was the serious side of the matter, and Farmer Simpson had not yet taken time to consider it.

"That's a fact," he said reflectively. "It's going to everlastedly bust the thing up for you, ain't it? As I told him, some of us'd wait; but I'm mortally afeard most of 'em won't. What's the first thing to do about it?"

"Telegraph and find out for sure," said Tom, promptly; and, having answered the question, a side-light on the joke flashed upon him like an unexpected flare of lightning.

"Great Cæsar!" he exclaimed. "There's another thing we haven't thought of. Now Mr. Manville thinks I'm drowned, and he'll give the alarm as he goes. It'll scare my sister half to death!"

Then Aaron Simpson saw what he had done, and made a dash for the barn, calling to Tom to follow.

"There ain't no fool like an old fool, Tommy; don't you ever forget that!" he ejaculated, flinging the harness on a sleek young sorrel, and hauling the horse out to a sulky in the yard by main strength. "Get in quick, and drive like Jehu! When you've got that story headed off, just keep the sorrel to do your runnin' round with. I'll see to Olestrom and the Swedes; we won't give up till we find out for sure about the washouts, Off you go!"

The sorrel was fresh and the sulky weighed next to nothing, so Tom made racing speed to The Maples. Manville had been there before him and raised the hue and cry; but, fortunately, the report had not yet come to Kate's ears. She was just coming downstairs with Eleanor Haworth when Tom drove up; so they heard the story of his drowning and met Tom himself at the same moment.

"I think Mr. Simpson did just right," said Kate, vindictively. "Mr. Manville needed shocking, if any one ever did. You poor boy! what a time you have had!" But it was hardship past, and Tom made light of it. Moreover, he was generous enough to charge the adventure to his gullibility first and his rashness afterward. Then the girls went in to breakfast, and Tom sat with them and exchanged news with his sister.

"I'm glad you wired last night," he said, when Kate told him what had been done. "The more I think of it, the more it looks just like a put-up job. We ought to get an answer from Mr. Barnes this morning."

"You can't do much till we do, can you?" Kate asked.

"No; the way the thing stands now, I haven't anything to say."

"Even if your general passenger-agent denies the report, you'll have your work all to do over again, won't you?" said Eleanor Haworth.

"Every last bit of it; but I can't make a move till I have his telegram to show."

At that moment Mrs. Cartwright came in with a letter addressed to Eleanor.

"A boy came out with Henry's buckboard, and he is waiting to take back an answer," she explained.

Eleanor opened the envelope, and a telegram fell out. The note of inclosure was from her brother, and she read it aloud:

With Tom sitting opposite, alive and well, they could afford to laugh at the alarm; but Kate quickly saw direful possibilities of a wider range.

"Mercy on us! He'll get it on the wires next, and mother and father will hear of it and go wild. Write your brother quick, and tell him to stop the story before it gets out of Richville."

The thing was done in a twinkling, and the messenger was despatched, with a liberal tip to purchase celerity. Not till that was done did any of them remember the telegram. It was from General Passenger-Agent Barnes, and it said:

"Hurrah!" cried Tom, waving the telegram over his head jubilantly. "That settles it. Now watch Tom Jarnagan, Junior, go out and tie Mr. Manville up in a hard knot!"

"Keep cool, Tom," said his sister, warningly; "remember your weakness, and go slowly. You have all day before you, and, for pity's sake, don't do anything rash. Everything depends upon you now."

"And the horse," amended Tom. "Mr. Simpson let me take his colt for the day, and, I tell you, he's a flier."

Not to lose any precious time, he made preparations to begin the recanvass at once, and Kate and Eleanor went to the gate with him.

"Be careful," was Kate's final admonition. "Keep in communication with Mr. Haworth or me, and don't fall into any more traps."

Tom promised, and drove first to Aaron Simpson's, to show his telegram and to start the ball in motion from that center. Petersen had been over, and Simpson started out to make the round of the neighborhood.

Then Tom drove to Japhet Rutherford's, and, inasmuch as the conflicting reports had not reached that neighborhood, he had no difficulty in arranging for the presence of the other section of the colony at the proposed meeting. That done, he returned to Richville, astounded the jovial landlord at the hotel by turning up as if nothing unusual had happened, and then went to Judge Sloan's.

His reception was not altogether what he thought he had a right to expect. The judge listened—rather doubtingly, Tom fancied—to the story of the decoy letter, read the telegram without comment, and was silent for a full minute after Tom had concluded.

"I'm sorry for you, my boy," he began, at length. "You ought to have stayed here and faced the thing out. I could have told you there were no members of the party in Monkton. As to this report and its contradiction, you needn't feel hurt if I say that it's a little difficult for us to know what to believe."

"But there is Mr. Barnes's telegram!" protested Tom, to whom everything with a general office signature was law and gospel.

"Yes, I know—or what purports to be; but you must remember that I don't know Mr. Barnes, nor by what means this message was procured. If Mr. Manville's superior confirms it, that will settle the question beyond doubt. I know it's hard for you to admit any point of view but your own; but to us"—he emphasized the plural—"it appears to be a question of veracity, with the weight of evidence on the side of a report in a newspaper which can scarcely favor either party."

Tom could scarcely credit his senses. Was this the kindly gentleman who had so encouraged him only twenty-four hours before?

"Why, Judge Sloan, don't you see that Mr. Manville's at the bottom of it all? " he burst out.

"No, I do not. That is a very grave charge, involving the editor of our paper. I can't entertain it."

Tom turned away with a heartache. He was untrained to bear rebuffs; and he was learning that the way to repentance with restitution is likely to be cruelly hard. He stayed to ask but a single question:

"Judge Sloan, have you promised Mr. Manville to go over his road?"

The judge's reply was ambiguous: "As the matter stands at present, I know of no other way to reach our destination. We shall hold our meeting, as arranged; if you have anything further to say, you should say it there."

Tom left the judge's office with his head in a whirl and the burden of accountability weighing little less than a ton. Yet he would not give up until he had made the whole weary round again, or as much of it as he could make in what was left of the day.

When that was done, and he had talked with every man, he knew he was defeated. As between his story, certified by the telegram, and the single sentence in the "Argus," there seemed to be no question whatever. He found his arguments met and even forestalled in a way which would have made an experienced agent suspicious at once.

As a matter of fact, Manville, upon discovering that he was not guilty of having caused Tom's drowning, had thrown himself into the railway fight with renewed vigor, timing his movements so as to keep just ahead of Simpson's sorrel and the sulky. At the very beginning of the canvass, he shrewdly doubled back, and, by re-interviewing a member of the party whom Tom had just visited, learned exactly what Tom was doing. After that, he was able to fortify his position with the others at precisely the point which Tom would attack.

So successful was this manœuver that it prevailed even with the greater number of Aaron Simpson's followers, and before evening Tom's stanch friend found himself holding out almost alone. Tom met him late in the afternoon at the house of one of the colonists, and, after a comfortless conference, drove back to town, too dejected to see a gleam of hope on any horizon.

More than once he caught himself wishing that he might turn back the years to a time when it would have been something less than disgraceful to wash away his troubles in a manner peculiar to small boys and to girls of all ages. Since it was too late to do that, he tried to put a brave face on it, and upon his arrival in town went to the railway station to see Mr. Haworth.

"No wire yet, I suppose," he said, when the agent admitted him to the office.

"No; and I'm afraid we're not going to get it in time," replied Haworth.

"I don't see why it should take so long."

"Don't you? I do. Mr. Barnes has asked the Transcontinental to contradict a report which is favorable to its business. Manville's general passenger-agent suspects the true origin of the report; and while Mr. Barnes can compel him to admit that he has no authority to carry East & West business, he will naturally delay the denial as long as he can, so as to give his man time to secure the party."

"It doesn't matter much," rejoined Tom, dejectedly. "I've been all around and talked with everybody, and I don't believe I could get the party now if I had forty telegrams."

"Oh, I shouldn't give up yet, by any means; you may come out all right in the end."

"No, I sha'n't; and you wouldn't think so if you'd been through what I have to-day. Why, everybody has gone back on me but Mr. Simpson. Even Judge Sloan won't have anything more to do with me."

"Don't you worry about the judge. His strong point is even-handed justice. If we can once make him understand that you've been unfairly treated, he'll fight for you to the finish. I've known Judge Sloan all my life."

"I wish my father were here!" said Tom.

"So do I."

Tom's eyes sought the floor. "Do you know why he isn't here?"

"Yes; your sister told me last night."

"Then you know why I've tried so hard to make this thing go. And now to be—to be—" He thrust his hands into his pockets with nervous vehemence and turned to the window.

The agent was considerate enough to turn his back; and when he spoke he led the talk back into the practical channel.

"You're not offering to carry any of the leaders free, are you?" he asked.

"Of course not; I have no authority."

"Manville is."

"I know it; he has given Olestrom a pass."

"Yes, and offered one to Judge Sloan. The judge wouldn't take it."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Yes. Hawley, my operator, overheard Manville telling Norton about it." The agent put his books into the safe and turned the knob of the combination. "What's the programme for to-night? Of course you'll go to the meeting?"

"Oh, yes; I'll go to punish myself—that's all it will amount to now," said Tom.

"Well, your sister and mine wish to go, too," Haworth continued, ignoring the discouragement in Tom's reply. "Supposing you drive out to The Maples for supper, and then go on from there with them."

Tom agreed,—he would have agreed to anything just then,—and asked if the agent would be at the meeting.

"Not unless the message we want comes before six-thirty. When I go to supper, I'll get my horse and bring him down. Then, if it comes at the last minute, I'll get it to you as quick as 'Bucephalus' can cover the road."

"Oh, thank you—thank you!" said Tom, out of a full heart. "Some people are a good deal kinder to me than I deserve." And he left the office before he should be tempted beyond what he could bear.

At the supper-table he told Kate and Eleanor all that had befallen, and so did not have to account otherwise for his lack of appetite. Kate began to condole with him, as her sympathy prompted; but when she saw how perilously near he was to the brink of things, she changed front quickly, and rallied him mercilessly upon his unsuccess. Eleanor Haworth thought it needlessly cruel, though she forebore to say so; but Kate knew her brother. By the time the trio set out to walk to the school-house, Tom had crept far enough back from the brink to take his defeat with a certain measure of philosophy.

As they were going out at the gate, a smart buggy went by, with Manville driving and Judge Sloan occupying the other half of the narrow seat.

"That settles it," said Tom, ruefully; "he's got them, horse, foot, and artillery. Come on; let's go to the funeral—it's mine."