The Rainy Day Railroad War | Page 6

that in five minutes would have his face streaming with blood.
"They do just love the taste of city sports," said the guide. "We old sanups ain't much of a delicacy 'long side of such as you. Here, let me put this on." He daubed the white face of the city man with an evil-smelling compound of tar and oil.
Jerrard's mind was rapidly freeing itself from transportation worries. Then came the long paddle across Spinnaker Lake, with only the unfamiliar insecurity of a canoe beneath him, and after that the six-mile Poquette carry.
By this time Jerrard had forgotten the P. K. & R. entirely.
The canoe and duffel went across the carry slung upon a set of wheels. Jerrard rode in the low-backed middle seat of a muddy buck-board.
The wheels ran against boulders, grated off with indignant "chuckering" of axle-boxes, hobbled over stumps and plowed through "honey-pots" of mud.
"For goodness' sake," gasped Jerrard, holding desperately to the seat, "why don't you get into the road?"
The driver, a French-Canadian turned and displayed an appreciative grin.
"Eet ban de ro'd vat you saw de re," he explained, pointing his whip to the thoroughfare they were pursuing.
"This a road?" demanded Jerrard, with indignation.
"Oui, eet ban a tote-road."
"I never heard of this kind before," ejaculated Jerrard, between bumps, "but the name 'road' ought not to be disgraced in any such fashion. How much of it is there?"
"Sax mal'."
"Six miles! All like this?"
"Aw-w-w some pretty well, some as much bad."
"Well, I don't know just what you mean," muttered Jerrard, "but I fear I can imagine." After what seemed a long interval, and when Jerrard, dizzied by the bumps and the curves, believed that the end must be near,--for six miles are but an inconsiderable item to the traffic-manager of a thousand-mile system,--he asked how far they had come. The driver looked at the trees. "Wan mal', mabbee, an' some leetle more." The railroad man opened his mouth to make a discourteous retort reflecting on the driver's judgment of distances, but just then one of the rear wheels slipped off a rock. It came down kerchunk. Jerrard bit his cheek and his tongue. After that he sat and held to his seat with a hopeless idea that the end of the road was running away from them.
Half-way through the woods he bought two fat doughnuts and a piece of apple pie at a wayside log house. He munched his humble fare with a gusto he had not known for years. The jolting, the shaking, the tossing had started his sluggish blood and cleared his business-befogged brain. His food was spiced with the aroma of the hemlocks, and when they took to the road again he began to hum tunes.
[Illustration: Then he fell to chuckling 049-050]
Then he fell to chuckling. And when a smooth stretch suffered him to unclasp his cramped hold, he slapped his leg mirthfully. He was thinking what President Whittaker of the P. K. & R. would be saying in two weeks.
President Whittaker was a rotund, flabby man, whom long indulgence in rubber-tired broughams and double-springed private cars had softened until he reminded one of a fat down pillow.
"Jerrard," he had said, at parting, "if you find good fishing I'll follow you in two weeks. I need a little outdoor relaxation myself."
Jerrard sent an enthusiastic letter right back by the tote-road driver. He took the word of his guide about the fishing in prospect. In his new and ebullient spirits he felt that he could hardly wait two weeks for the spectacle--Whittaker in the middle seat of a buck-board, on that six-mile carry road. And when the day came, Jerrard, now bronzed, alert and agile walked out over the Poquette Carry, paddled down to Sunkhaze, and received his superior with open arms.
The unconsciousness of the corpulent Whittaker as he left the train, spick and span in tweed and polished shoes appealed to Jerrard's sense of the ludicrous so acutely that the president, following the baggage-laden guide down to the shore of the lake, stopped and looked at his friend with puzzled gaze.
"I say, Jerrard, you seem to be in a good humor."
"Nothing like the ozone of the forest to make you sparkle," chuckled the traffic-manager.
It is unnecessary to describe the incidents of the trip across the lake, the apprehensive flinching of the fat president whenever the canoe lurched, and his fear of breaking through the bottom of the frail shell.
But when they were well out on the carry road in the buckboard, Jerrard, gazing on the indescribable mixture of reproach, horror, pain and astonishment that the president's face presented laughed until Whittaker forgot dignity, cares and fears, and laughed, too.
Two days later, as they were eating their lunch beside the famous spring in the north cove of Kennemagon Whittaker stretched himself luxuriously on the gray moss, and