Mrs. Minks Soldier and Other Stories | Page 9

Nashville,--if the train went, he could go,--but the prospect of arriving without decent clothes and with no money to pay for a lodging, did not in the least appeal to him. He thought with regret of his well-laid plans: an early arrival, a Turkish bath, the purchase of a new outfit, instalment at a good hotel, then--presentation at the fraternity headquarters of Mr. Phelan Harrihan, Gentleman for a Night. He could picture it all, the dramatic effect of his entrance, the yell of welcome, the buzz of questions, and the evasive, curiosity-enkindling answers which he meant to give. Then the banquet, with its innumerable courses of well-served food, the speeches and toasts, and the personal ovation that always followed Mr. Harrihan's unique contribution.
Oh! he couldn't miss it! Providence would interfere in his behalf, he knew it would, it always did. "Give me my luck, and keep your lucre!" was a saying of Phelan's, quoted by brother hoboes from Maine to the Gulf.
All the long afternoon he tramped the ties, with Corporal at his heels. As dusk came on the clouds that had been doing picket duty, joined the regiment on the horizon which slowly wheeled and charged across the sky. Phelan scanned the heavens with an experienced weather eye, then began to look for a possible shelter from the coming shower. On either side, the fields stretched away in undulating lines, with no sign of a habitation in sight. A dejected old scarecrow, and a tumble-down shed in the distance were the only objects that presented themselves.
Turning up his coat-collar Phelan made a dash for the shed, but the shower overtook him half-way. It was not one of your gentle little summer showers, that patter on the shingles waking echoes underneath; it was a large and instantaneous breakage in the celestial plumbing that let gallons of water down Phelan's back, filling his pockets, hat brim, and shoes and sending a dashing cascade down Corporal's oblique profile.
"Float on your back, Corp, and pull for the shore!" laughed Phelan as he landed with a spring under the dilapidated shed. "Cheer up, old pard; you look as if all your past misdeeds had come before you in your drowning hour."
Corporal, shivering and unhappy, crept under cover, and dumbly demanded of Phelan what he intended to do about it.
"Light a blaze, sure," said Phelan, "and linger here in the air of the tropics till the midnight freight comes along."
Scraping together the old wood and débris in the rear of the shed, and extricating with some difficulty a small tin match-box from his saturated clothes, he knelt before the pile and used all of his persuasive powers to induce it to ignite.
At the first feeble blaze Corporal's spirits rose so promptly that he had to be restrained.
"Easy there! Corp," cautioned Phelan. "A fire's like a woman, you can't be sure of it too soon. And, dog alive, stop wagging your tail, don't you see it makes a draft?"
The fire capriciously would, then it wouldn't. A tiny flame played tantalizingly along the top of a stick only to go sullenly out when it reached the end. Match after match was sacrificed to the cause, but at last, down deep under the surface, there was a steady, reassuring, cheerful crackle that made Phelan sit back on his heels, and remark complacently:
"They most generally come around, in the end!"
In five minutes the fire was burning bright, Corporal was dreaming of meaty bones in far fence corners, and Phelan, less free from the incumbrances of civilization, was divesting himself of his rain-soaked garments.
From one of the innumerable pockets of his old cutaway coat he took a comb and brush and clothes-brush, and carefully deposited them before the fire. Then from around his neck he removed a small leather case, hung by a string and holding a razor. His treasured toilet articles thus being cared for, he turned his attention to the contents of his dripping bundle. A suit of underwear and a battered old copy of Eli Perkins were ruefully examined, and spread out to dry.
The fire, while it lasted, was doing admirable service, but the wood supply was limited, and Phelan saw that he must take immediate advantage of the heat. How to dry the underwear which he wore was the question which puzzled him, and he wrestled with it for several moments before an inspiration came.
"I'll borrow some duds from the scarecrow!" he said half aloud, and went forth immediately to execute his idea.
The rain had ceased, but the fields were still afloat, and Phelan waded ankle deep through the slush grass, to where the scarecrow raised his threatening arms against the twilight sky.
"Beggars and borrowers shouldn't be choosers," said Phelan, as he divested the figure of its ragged trousers and coat, "but I have a strong