Dixie Hart | Page 7

and partially bald pate, in a new oaken frame, hung near the
clock--"that man was a Bryant supporter from the minute the
sixteen-to-one proposition electrocuted the world to the day of his
death."
"Electrofied," corrected Mrs. Henley. "You oughtn't to use words out of
the common. People don't understand them hereabouts."
"Well, they ought to grow up to it," Wrinkle grunted in his cup. "I read
more'n they do, I reckon, an' sometimes a word tickles me till I git it
out."
Henley ate his breakfast in silence. He was known to be a good talker
himself, but he seldom indulged the tendency when Wrinkle was
present. The meal over, he took his hat and went out. The road passing
the farm-house led straight into the main street of the village, and along
it he strode in the soothing, crisp air. His store stood on the square
which encompassed the stone court-house. The store was a plain
wooden building which had never been painted, but had received from
time and the weather a gray, fuzzy coat which answered every purpose.
It was about eighty feet long by thirty in width, and had a porch in front,
which was reached from the sidewalk by a few steps. Ascending to the
door, Henley unlocked it and proceeded from the rather dark interior to
unscrew the faded green window-shutters. These thrown back on the

outside, the light filled the long room, displaying two rows of counters
and shelving. The right-hand side was devoted to dry goods and notions,
the left to groceries, hardware, and crockery. Henley went on to the rear,
where, by lifting a massive wooden bar from iron sockets, he opened a
door in one side of the house. Next he took up a water-pail from an
inverted soap-box, and, emptying the contents, he went to the well in
the adjoining yard, a fenced enclosure which contained a conglomerate
mass of old junk, broken-down wagons, buggies, agricultural
implements, and other odds and ends which the merchant had bought
very low or taken in some sort of exchange for new wares whereby
they had cost him practically nothing. Returning with the water, he had
just seated himself at his desk in the rear when his clerk, James Cahews,
entered at the front, busied himself putting out some samples of
hardware on the porch, and then came back to his employer. He was
tall, well built, had very blue eyes, yellow hair, and a sweeping
mustache which was well curled at the ends. He was without a coat and
wore a blue cravat and a shirt of fancy cotton which matched none too
well.
"You beat me to the tank again, Alf," was his jovial greeting. "I would
have got here sooner, but I stopped to drive Mrs. Hayward's cow in for
her. The blamed huzzy took a notion to prance about over the
school-house lot, and the old lady is too near-sighted to see which way
to turn and was afraid she'd get hooked."
"No hurry, no hurry," Henley said, as the other took up a battered tin
sprinkling-pot and, filling it from the pail, began to dampen and sweep
the floor, after which he lazily wiped the counters with a soiled towel.
"Pomp will be here after a while," the clerk said, pausing near where
Henley sat, his glance thoughtfully on the sunlit ground in the yard. "I
come by his cabin. He said he had to run for some medicine for his
wife, and I told him I'd sweep out for him. Them dern niggers had
rather take medicine than eat ice-cream at a festival. I don't know that
it's anybody else's business," he went on, after he had stood the broom
in a corner and was wiping the top of Henley's desk, "but thar is
considerable talk going around that you intend to take a trip to Texas."

"I'm thinking seriously of it," Henley admitted. "I've heard of a deal or
two in land out there that I want to get a finger in. You know, Jim, that
I don't really make my best trades here in this shack; nothing worth
while seems to come this way. I reckon it's because this country is old
and settled. In a new, undeveloped section like that out there big things
is continually happening. The general impression is that a trading-man
can make more amongst ignorant folks than amongst keen traffickers,
but it is a mistake. Folks that ain't born with the flea of speculation
wigglin' in their brain-pans won't never let loose of nothing. It is the
feller that is eternally on the lookout for opportunities that will sell the
shirt off his back to raise money when he thinks he sees an opening.
Then there ain't no fun nor Christianity in making