After attending personally to the matter of feeding their horses oats, the two set forth with the air of having a definite purpose.
Their subsequent actions confirmed it, for they approached divers persons of their acquaintance as if they had business of a confidential nature. The invariable result of these mysterious negotiations, however, was a negative shake of the head.
After another obvious failure Pinkey said gloomily:
"If I put in half the time and thought trying to be a Senator that I do figgerin" how to git a bottle, I"d be elected."
Wallie replied hopefully:
"Something may turn up yet."
"I"d lift a cache from a preacher! I"d steal booze off my blind aunt!
I"d----"
"We"ll try some more "prospects" before we give up. It"s many months since I"ve gone out of town sober and I don"t like to establish a precedent. I"m superst.i.tious about things like that," said Wallie.
At this unquestionably psychological moment Mr. Tucker beckoned them from his doorway. They responded with such alacrity that their gait approached a trot, although they had no particular reason to believe that it was his intention to offer them a drink. It was merely a hope born of their thirst.
Their reputation was such, however, that any one who wished to demonstrate his friendship invariably evidenced it in this way, taking care, in violation of the ethics of bygone days, to do the pouring himself.
Mr. Tucker winked elaborately when he invited them in, and Wallie and Pinkey exchanged eloquent looks as they followed him to his Land Office in the rear of the store.
Inside, he locked the door and lowered the shade of the single window which looked out on an areaway. No explanation was necessary as he took a hatchet and pried up a plank. This accomplished, he reached under the floor and produced a tin cup and a two-gallon jug.
He filled it with a fluid of an unfamiliar shade and pa.s.sed it to Pinkey, who smelled it and declared that he could drink anything that was wet. Wallie watched him eagerly as it gurgled down his throat.
"Well?" Mr. Tucker waited expectantly for the verdict.
Pinkey wiped his mouth.
"Another like that and I could watch my mother go down for the third time and laugh!"
"Where did you get it?" Wallie in turn emptied the cup and pa.s.sed it back.
"S-ss-sh!" Mr. Tucker looked warningly at the door. "I made it myself--brown sugar and raisins. You like it then?"
"If I had about "four fingers" in a wash-tub every half hour---- What would you hold a quart of that at?" Pinkey leaned over the opening in the floor and sniffed.
Mr. Tucker hastily replaced the plank and declared:
"Oh, I wouldn"t dast! I jest keep a little on hand for my particular friends that I can trust. By the way, Mr. Macpherson, what are you goin"
to do with that homestead you took up?"
"Hold it. Why?"
"I thought I might run across a buyer sometime and I wondered what you asked."
A hardness came into Wallie"s face and Tucker added:
"I wasn"t goin" to charge you any commission--you"ve had bad luck and----"
"You"re the seventh philanthropist that"s wanted to sell that place in my behalf for about $400, because he was sorry for me," Wallie interrupted, drily. "You tell Canby that when he makes me a decent offer I"ll consider it."
"No offence--no offence, I hope?" Tucker protested.
"Oh, no." Wallie shrugged his shoulder. "Only don"t keep getting me mixed with the chap that took up that homestead. I"ve had my eyeteeth cut."
Extending an invitation to call and quench their thirsts with his raisinade when next they came to town, Tucker unlocked the door.
After the two had wormed their way through the bureaus and stoves and were once more in the street, they turned and gave each other a long, inquiring look.
"Pink," demanded Wallie, solemnly, "did you smell anything when he raised that plank?"
"Did I smell anything! Didn"t you see me sniff? That joker has got a cache of the real stuff and he gave us raisinade! I couldn"t git an answer from a barrel of that. He couldn"t have insulted us worse if he"d slapped our faces."
"A man ought to be punished that would do a wicked thing like that."
"You"ve said somethin", Gentle Annie."
The two looked at each other in an understanding that was beautiful and complete.
The behaviour of the visitors was nearly too good to be true--it was so exemplary, in fact, as to be suspicious, and acting upon this theory, the barber closed his shop early, pinned on his badge of office, and followed them about. But when at ten o"clock they had broken nothing, quarrelled with n.o.body, and drunk only an incredible quant.i.ty of soda pop, he commenced to think he had been wrong.
At eleven, when they were still in a pool-hall playing "solo" for a cent a chip, he decided to go home. There he confided to his wife that no more striking example of the benefits of prohibition had come under his observation than the conduct of this notorious pair who, when sober, were well mannered and docile as lambs.
It was twelve or thereabouts when two figures crept stealthily up the alley behind Mr. Tucker"s Second-Hand Store and raised the window looking out on the areaway. As noiselessly as trained burglars they pried up the plank and investigated by the light of a match.
"Well, what do you think of that!"
"I feel like somebody had died and left me a million dollars!" said Pinkey in an awed tone, reaching for a tin cup. "I didn"t think they was anybody in the world as mean as Tucker."
"You mustn"t get too much," Wallie admonished, noting the size of the drink Pinkey was pouring for himself.
"I"ve never had too much. I may have had enough, but never too much,"
Pinkey grinned. "I don"t take no int"rest in startin" less"n a quart."
"I hope he"ll have the decency to be ashamed of himself when he finds out we know what he did to us. I shouldn"t think he"d want to look us in the face," Wallie declared, virtuously.
"He won"t git a chanst to look in my face for some time to come if we kin lift this cache."
Together they filled the grain sack they had brought and carefully replaced the plank, then, staggering under the weight of the load, made their way to a gulch, buried the sack, and marked the hiding-place with a stone. With a righteous sense of having acted as instruments of Providence in punishing selfishness, they returned to town to follow such whims as seized them under the stimulus of a bottle of Mr. Tucker"s excellent Bourbon.
The constable had been asleep for hours when a yell--a series of yells--made him sit up. He listened a moment, then with a sigh of resignation got up, dressed, and took the key of the calaboose from its nail by the kitchen sink.
"I"ll lock "em up and be right back," he said to his sleepy wife, who seemed to know whom he meant too well to ask.
Under the arc light in front of the Prouty House he found them doing the Indian "stomp" dance to the delight of the guests who were leaning from their windows to applaud.
"Ain"t you two ashamed of yerselves?" the constable demanded, scandalized--referring to the fact that Pinkey and Wallie had divested themselves of their trousers and boots and were dancing in their stocking feet.