The Skipper and the Skipped | Page 3

the gloomy mouth of the covered bridge, and the roaring echoes followed him.
The skipper stood looking first at the mouth of the bridge and then at the sign above it that warned:
THREE DOLLARS' FINE FOR DRIVING FASTER THAN A WALK
"As I was jest sayin'," he muttered, as the noise of the wheels died away, "I should like to see that man--and I reckon as how I have."
He sat down under the woodbine that wreathed the little porch and slowly filled his pipe, his gaze still on the bridge opening. As he crooked his leg and dragged the match across the faded blue of his trousers he growled:
"I dunno who he is, nor where he's come from, nor where he's goin' to, nor when he expects to get back, but, as near as I can figger it, he owes me ten cents' toll and three dollars' fine-money, makin' a total of three ten, to be charged and collected, as I understand it."
When he had got his pipe to going, after some little gruntings, he pulled out a note-book and a stubby pencil and marked down the figures. At the head of the page he scrawled:
"Old Hurrycain, Dr."
"That name 'll have to do till I git a better one," he mused, and then stood up to receive toll from a farmer who drove slowly out from the bridge, his elbows on his knees, his horse walking slouchily.
"If it ain't no great output to you, mister, to tell, do you happen to know who was the nub of that streak of wind and cuss-words that jest went past here?"
The farmer bored him strangely a moment with his little gimlet eyes, snorted out a laugh, clapped his reins, and started on.
"I heard ye was a joker!" he shouted back, his beard trailing over his shoulder as he turned his head.
"There ain't no joke to this!" roared the skipper. But the man kept on.
Another patron emerged from the bridge, digging from his trousers pocket.
"You spoke it, didn't ye?" demanded the skipper. "Chain lightnin' on wheels. Who is he?"
The man grinned amiably and appreciatively.
"Quite a hand to hector, ain't ye, toll-keeper? He was goin' so fast I didn't know him, neither." He drove on, though the Cap'n hobbled after him, shouting strong language, in which the parrots joined.
"You needn't try to make me think that there ain't nobody who don't know the Kun'l," was the retort the man flung over his shoulder.
"Nice and accommodatin' class of paternage that's passin'," growled the Cap'n, kicking an inoffensive chair as he came back to his platform. "They talk about him as though he was Lord Gull and ruler of the stars. Jest as though a man that had sailed deep water all his days knowed all the old land-pirut's 'round here!"
It was a pedestrian--Old Man Jordan, bound to the village with a few pats of butter in a bucket--that the skipper finally held up.
"Oh, sho!" said Old Man Jordan. "'Course ye know him. Every one does."
"I tell you I don't!" bawled the skipper.
"Why, yas you do."
"Say, look a-here, What's-your-name, I'm goin' to give ye ten seconds to tell me the name of that critter."
He made a clutch to one side, and then remembered with a flush that he was no longer in reach of a spike-rack.
"Why, that was Kun'l Gideon Ward," faltered Uncle Jordan, impressed at last by the Cap'n's fury. "I thought ye knew."
"Thought! Thought! Why, ye never thought in your life. You only thought you thought. I dunno no more who you mean by 'Kun'l Gideon Ward' than as though you said General Bill Beelzebub."
"Why, yas you do--"
"There you go again! Do you mean to stand here and tell me I'm a liar?"
The glare in the seaman's eyes was too fierce to be fronted.
"Kun'l Gideon Ward is--is--wall, he's Kun'l Gideon Ward."
Jordan backed away suddenly at the oath the Cap'n ripped out.
"He owns more timber land than any other man in the county. He hires more men than any one else. He ain't never been downed in a trade or a fight yet. He's got double teeth, upper and lower, all the way round, drinks kairosene in the winter 'cause it's more warmin' than rum, and--and--"
"Well, what's that got to do with his runnin' toll on this bridge?" demanded the Cap'n.
"Bridge piers hold up his logs, he says, and he ain't never goin' to pay toll till the bridgemen pay him for loss of time on logs. It's been what you might call a stand-off for a good many years. Best thing is to let him run toll. That's what your uncle thought. I reckoned you knew all about Kun'l Gid Ward. Why, everybody knows--"
"Say, you let up on that string right now and here," snorted the Cap'n.
Old Man Jordan trotted away.
While the skipper was still pondering on