LITMIR.BIZ

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also very dark, and Jake cast a furtive eye at the dense shad­ows more than once as he was wheeled up the path to his porch. He didn’t want to die before he found a way to get rid of that money, and Luke James might very well be lurk­ing in ambush.

      But they reached the porch safe­ly, and although Partridge showed distinct desire to renew his acquain­tance with the lady of the house, Jake ordered him to be on his way, with parting advice that if he was smart he wouldn’t stop till he was clear out of the state.

      Then Jake pushed open the door and wheeled himself in, and found that his niece had been watching for his arrival through the front window.

      Mary Platt was just twenty years old, and she had something bewitch­ing about her for every one of the years; so many things, in fact, that it was one of Jake’s biggest fears that she might actually bewitch him into liking her. And now she was blushing, possibly from seeing the kind of com­pany Jake’d had on his way home, and also angry, for the odor of very bad whisky was quickly filling the room. It was a very bewitching com­bination.

      “Jake Perkins, you’ve been drinking again! And you know very well it’s bad for your blood-pressure!”

      ‘‘Fat lot you care about my blood-pressure!” Jake snapped, looking ev­erywhere but at her to escape being bewitched, and very glad he had sent Partridge away. He wouldn’t want any man to see him getting a bawling-out from a danged upstart girl. “You’re jus’ hopin’ they carry me home one o’ these nights. That’s why you’re always mad when I show up alive.”

      A sorcerous tear appeared in Mary’s eye, but she wiped it away quickly, stooped to kiss him on the forehead—causing him more anguish—and wheeled him into the living room.

      “I’m sorry, Uncle,” she said softly. “Are you sleepy?”

      “No,” he barked.

      “Would you like me to read to you? We’ve never finished Pilgrim’s Progress.”

      “The hell with that pilgrim—he ain’t progressin’ fast enough for me. I don’t want to hear no books. I want to sit here and think, an’ when I get sleepy I’ll go to sleep by the fire.”

      He bent to release the catch on the door of the crow’s cage, whereupon the bird emerged, hopped several times around the room, and returned to the foot of his chair, where it stood and spoke these, famous words: “I’ll blow you to hell, you sidewinder! Ha, ha, ha! Sidewinder, sidewinder. Ha, ha!”

      Mary plugged her ears and ran up­stairs before Satan could give further details.

      * * * *

      Jake wished his legs had been good, so that he could give Satan a kick in the direction he proposed to blow the sidewinder, but he settled on throwing a stick of firewood at him, making a clean miss, so that Satan was able to retire to a corner and amuse himself by picking at the bright buttons on a pair of Jake’s shoes.

      Jake could have sworn, then, that he heard a gentle sobbing sound coming from the region of Mary’s bed­room, but he put this down as a product of his imagination, which was working hard at the moment.

      For instance, suppose—he of course had no hope that any such-thing could possibly be true—but suppose that Mary did love him, the way she pre­tended to, instead of just wanting his money. Suppose she didn’t care a hoot about that thirty-thousand dollars he had in the bank—

      Ah, but that was impossible. What was lovable about him—he was a crip­pled, cranky old man. Why, even the crow Satan hated him. And he thought about the world of Might Be, and thought how wonderful it would be, and how he would have loved his life in it. He shook his head mournfully and dozed away, and all the belliger­ence, the sharp voice, and the I-don’t-give-a-damn part of him slept. Only Satan remained to think, with his little eyes glittering brighter as the fire died, and finally he went to sleep too.

      * * * *

      Jake had a little garden behind his house. Nothing had ever grown in it but weeds and wire-grass, but he con­sidered his day wasted if part of it wasn’t spent in pushing his wheelchair around over that patch of earth and pecking at it with a hoe or rake. He was engaged in this industrious occupation, and computing his next year’s crop—which he very well knew would be nothing—when Mary, who should’have been at the school-house teaching the youngsters their Three R’s, came rushing into the garden out of breath and with her pretty hair all out of place—which might have made it even prettier.

      “Uncle Jake! Oh, Uncle!”

      “Well, what ails you?” Jake de­manded, making a pass with the rake at Satan, who was uncovering and eating his seeds.

      “It’s all over town—that fight last night! Oh, why didn’t you tell me? Luke James is going around saying that he’s going to kill you—and Bob Partridge too.”

      “Well, ain’t that what you want? This is your lucky day. As for Par­tridge, I tol’ him to get out of town, and if he’s dumb enough to stay, I guess he’ll have to carry his own coffin.”

      Mary appeared about to dissolve into helpless tears, but maybe she remembered that this would only make her uncle worse than ever, for then he would try extra-hard to show that he didn’t care a fig. She instead became very firm and shook her finger threateningly under his nose.

      “He can help himself, but you can’t. You’ve got to let me take you to the school-house where you’ll be safe with us.”

      “I ain’t been in a school-house for sixty-five years and got along all right,” Jake retorted. He threw down his rake and glowered all around the garden, mad at the idea of anyone thinking he couldn’t take care of him­self. He guessed he’d done all right in the saloon last night when he’d saved Partridge from the licking of his life. And he guessed he could do all ­right now.

      “Okay,” he said, glaring back at her. “I guess I might’s well disappint you and tell the truth. James ain’t goin’ to kill nobody; he’s the biggest liar in the country. There’s a streak down his back as yellow as his teeth. He’ll go braggin’ around town for a couple days, and then he’ll sneak out when nobody’s lookin’ and be forgotten about. Besides, I tol’ the sheriff to hang around this end of town tonight, an’ if he sees James comin’ this way, he’ll make short work of him. So there. You go back to school and torture them poor kids. There’s some kind of parents’ meetin’ there tonight, ain’t there?”

      “Yes,” she said dimly.

      “Well, you stay for it. You might’s well not come home ’cause I ain’t goin’ to get killed and you’ll just be disappointed again. Understand?”

      “Yes,” she repeated and suddenly seized him and kissed him right square on the mouth. He finally had to push her away, and it’s a fact that he didn’t push too hard.

      Anyway, he didn’t have a thing to say about it, and even if he’d had, he wouldn’t have got the chance. She turned and rushed back the way she had come, and he was left alone—unless Satan could be considered com­pany.

      He cussed the crow until it came over and crawled into its cage, then he wheeled himself into the house. From the front room he could see the road that Luke James would have to come down if he intended to kill him. He wondered if Mary had believed the lies he had told her about James; but it was no matter, she was gone and that was all that she cared about.

      Confound it—why did she have to kiss him like that? Why, a less shrewd man, or one who didn’t know as much about life as he did, might have been fooled into thinking she’d meant that kiss. And if he’d have been that kind of dumb cluck, he might have been sitting there right now making out a will that would have left her all his money.

      But, fortunately, she hadn’t fooled him, and so he sat there without even the consolation of knowing someone loved him. And he even began to be impatient that the man who wanted to kill him was taking so long to come.

      * * * *

      At nine o’clock

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