Shorty McCabe | Page 5

him, and how he must eat a lot or she'd feel bad, to listen to any remarks of his about toasted crackers. For supper there was fried fish, apple sauce and hot biscuit, and Homer had to take his share. He was glad to go to bed early. She didn't object to that.
Mother Bickell's house was right in the middle of the town, with a grocery store on one side and the postoffice on the other. Homer had a big front room with three windows on Main Street. There was a strip of plank sidewalk in front of the house, so that you didn't miss any footfalls. Mother Bickell could tell who was goin' by without lookin'.
Leonidas and me put in the evening hearin' her tell about some of the things that had happened to her oldest boy. He'd had a whirl out of most everything but an earthquake. After that we had an account of how she'd buried her two husbands. About ten o'clock we started for bed, droppin' in to take a look at Homer. He was sittin' up, wide awake and lookin' worried.
"How many people are there in this town?" says he.
"About a thousand," says Leonidas. "Why?"
"Then they have all marched past my windows twice," says Homer.
"Shouldn't wonder," says Leonidas. "They've just been to the postoffice and back again. They do that four times a day. But you mustn't mind. Just you thank your stars you're down here where it's nice and quiet. Now I'd go to sleep if I was you."
Homer said he would. I was ready to tear off a few yards of repose myself, but somehow I couldn't connect. It was quiet, all right--in spots. Fact is, it was so blamed quiet that you could hear every rooster that crowed within half a mile. If a man on the other side of town shut a window you knew all about it.
I was gettin' there though, and was almost up to the droppin'-off place, when some folks in a back room on the next street begins to indulge in a family argument. I didn't pay much notice to the preamble, but as they warmed up to it I couldn't help from gettin' the drift. It was all about the time of year that a feller by the name of Hen Dorsett had been run over by the cars up to Jersey City.
"I say it was just before Thanksgivin'," pipes up the old lady. "I know, 'cause I was into the butcher's askin' what turkeys would be likely to fetch, when Doc Brewswater drops in and says: 'Mornin', Eph. Heard about Hen Dorsett?' And then he told about him fallin' under the cars. So it must have been just afore Thanksgivin'."
"Thanksgivin' your grandmother!" growls the old man. "It was in March, along the second week, I should say, because the day I heard of it was just after school election. March of '83, that's when it was."
"Eighty-three!" squeals the old lady. "Are you losin' your mind altogether? It was '85, the year Jimmy cut his hand so bad at the sawmill."
"Jimmy wasn't workin' at the mill that year," raps back the old man. "He was tongin' oysters that fall, 'cause he didn't hear a word about Hen until the next Friday night, when I told him myself. Hen was killed on a Monday."
"It was on a Saturday or I'm a lunatic," snaps the old lady.
Well, they kept on pilin' up evidence, each one makin' the other out to be a fool, or a liar, or both, until the old man says: "See here, Maria, I'm goin' up the street and ask Ase Horner when it was that Hen Dorsett was killed. Ase knows, for he was the one Mrs. Dorsett got to go up after Hen."
"Yes, and he'll tell you it was just before Thanksgivin' of '85, so what's the use?" says the old lady.
"We'll see what he says," growls the old man, and I heard him strike a light and get into his shoes.
"Who're you bettin' on?" says Leonidas.
"Gee!" says I. "Are you awake, too? I thought you was asleep an hour ago."
"I was," says he, "but when this Hen Dorsett debate breaks loose I came back to earth. I'll gamble that the old woman's right."
"The old man's mighty positive," says I. "Wonder how long it'll be before we get the returns?"
"Perhaps half an hour," says Leonidas. "He'll have to thrash it all out with Ase before he starts back. We might as well sit up and wait. Anyway I want to see which gets the best of it."
"Let's have a smoke, then," says I.
"Why not go along with the old man?" says Leonidas. "If he finds he's wrong he may come back and lie about it."
Well, it was a fool thing to do, when