The Postmaster Part 10

"Well," says Foster, "old Ebenezer Taylor, Ratty's dad, owns it, drat him! and he's tryin' to drive me out of town 'count of Rat's spendin' so much time in here. Ratty's a fine feller, but his pa's the meanest old skinflint that ever drawed the breath of life. Not meanin' no reflections on your family, Rat-but ain't it so?"

"_I_ shan't contradict you, Phi," says Ratty.

Jacobs and I looked at each other. Then I got up from my chair.

"Jim Henry," says I, "I don't see as we've got much to gain by stayin'

here. Let's go home."

We went back to the store, neither of us speakin', but both thinkin'

hard. It was all off now, of course. If old Taylor owned that mortgage, he'd foreclose on the nail, if only to get rid of his son's loafin'

place. And he wouldn't sell to us-hatin' us as he did-unless we covered the place with cash an inch deep. No, buyin' the "Palace" was a dead proposition. And there wa'n't another available buildin' or lot big enough for us to move to within a mile of Ostable Center.

"Humph!" says I, some sarcastic. "It looks to me-speakin' as a man in the crosstrees-as if that wonderful business brain of yours had sprung a leak somewheres, Jim. Better get your pumps to workin', hadn't you?"

He snorted. "I'd rather have a leaky head than a solid wood one like some I know," he says. "Quiet your Jezebellerin' and let me think....

There's one thing we might do, of course: We might advance the other five hundred to Foster, let him pay off his mortagage, and then-"

"And then trust to luck to get the money back," I put in. "There's more charity than profit in that, if you ask me. Once that mortgage is paid, you couldn't get Philander out of that buildin' with a derrick. He don't want to go."

"But we might make some sort of a deal to pay him a hundred dollars or so to boot and then-"

"And then you'd have another hundred to collect, that's all. I wouldn't trust that billiard and sipio man as fur as old Ebenezer could see through his nigh-to specs. No sir-ee! Nothin' doin', as the boys say."

Next forenoon I met old Ebenezer Taylor on the sidewalk in front of the Methodist meetin'-house and, when he saw me, he stopped and commenced chucklin' and gigglin' as if he was wound up.

"He, he, he!" says he. "He, he! I hear you and that partner of yours, Zebulon, want to buy my property next door to you. Well, I'll sell it to you-at a price. He, he, he! at a price."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _'Well, I'll sell it to you-at a price.'_]

"So your hopeful and promisin' son's been tellin' tales, has he?" says I. "I wa'n't aware that it was your property-yet."

He stopped gigglin' and glared at me, sour and bitter as a green crab-apple.

"It's goin' to be," he says. "Don't you forget that, it's goin' to be.

And if you want it, you'll pay my price. You owe me for them clothes you ruined, Zeb Snow-for them and for other things. And I cal'late I've got you fellers about where I want you."

"Oh, I don't know," says I. "You may be glad enough to sell to us later on. What good is an empty buildin' on your hands? Unless of course you intend rentin' it for another billiard saloon."

That made him so mad he fairly gurgled.

"There'll be no billiard saloon in this town," he declared. "No more gilded ha'nts of sin, temptin' young men whose parents have spent good money on their education. No, you bet there won't! And that buildin' may not be empty, nuther. I know somethin'. He, he, he!"

"Sho!" says I. "Do you? I wouldn't have believed it of you, Ebenezer."

I left him tryin' to think of a fittin' answer, and walked on to the store. Mary called to me from behind the letter-boxes.

"Mr. Jacobs is in the back room," she says, "and he wants to see you right away. Erastus Taylor is with him."

"'Rastus Taylor?" I sung out. "Ratty? What in the world-?"

I hurried into the back room. Sure enough, there was Jim Henry and Ratty caged behind a pile of boxes and barrels.

"Ah, Skipper!" says Jacobs; "is that you? I was hopin' you'd come. Young Taylor here has been suggestin' an idea that looks good to me. Tell the Cap'n what you've been tellin' me, Ratty."

Rat twisted uneasy on the box where he was settin' and give me a side look out of his little eyes. I never saw him look more like his nickname.

"Well, Cap'n Zeb," he says, "it's like this: I've been thinkin' and I believe I've thought of a way so you and Mr. Jacobs can get Philander's lot and buildin'."

"You have, hey?" says I. "That's interestin', if true. What's the way?"

"Why," says he, twistin' some more, "that mortgage is due on the first of June. If it ain't paid, Philander'll be foreclosed and he'll move out of town. It's only a thousand dollars and Phi's got half of it. If somebody-you and Mr. Jacobs, say-was to lend him t'other half, why then he could pay it off and-and-"

"And stay where he is," I finished disgusted. "That would be real lovely for Philander, but I don't see where we come in. This ain't a billiard and loan society Mr. Jacobs and I are runnin', thankin' you and Foster for the suggestion."

"Wait a minute, Skipper," says Jim Henry. "Your engine is runnin' wild.

That ain't Ratty's scheme at all. Go on, Rat; spring it on him."

"Philander wouldn't be so set on stayin' where he is, Cap'n Zeb," says Rat, quick as a flash, "if he had another place to move into; another place here on the main road, convenient and handy by. And I think I know a place that could be got for him."

I didn't answer for a minute. I was runnin' over in my mind every possible place that might be sold or let to Philander Foster for a "Palace." And to save my life I couldn't think of one.

"Well," says I, at last, "where is it?"

Ratty leaned forward. "What's the matter with Aunt Hannah Watson's buildin' up the street?" he says. "She's been crazy to sell it for a long spell. And the lower floor would make a pretty fair billiard room, wouldn't it?"

I was disgusted. I knew the buildin' he meant, of course. Jacobs and I had talked it over that very mornin' as a possible place to move the "Ostable Grocery, Dry Goods, Boots and Shoes and Fancy Goods Store" to, but we'd both decided it wa'n't nigh big enough.

"Humph!" says I, "that scheme's so brilliant you need smoked gla.s.s to look at it. Do you cal'late as good a church woman as Aunt Hannah Watson would sell or let her place for a billiard room? She needs the money bad enough, land knows; but she's as down on those ha'nts of sin as your dad is, Rat Taylor. She'd never sell to Phi Foster in this world."

"_She_ mightn't, I give in," answered Rat. "But her nephew up to Wareham is a diff'rent breed of cats. And since she moved over there to live along with him, he's got the handlin' of her property. I found that out to-day. From what I hear of this nephew man he ain't as particular as his aunt. And, anyway, 'tain't necessary for Philander to make the deal.

You and Mr. Jacobs might make it for him."

I thought this over for a minute. I begun to catch the idea that the young scamp had in his noddle-or I thought I did.

"H'm," I says. "Yes, yes. You mean that if we'd lend Philander enough to pay the balance of his mortgage on the buildin' he's in now and would fix it so's Aunt Hannah'd sell us her place, under the notion that _we_ was goin' to use it-you mean that then, after June fust, Foster'd swap.

He'd move in there and turn over the old 'Palace' to us."

He and Jim Henry both bobbed their heads emphatic.

"That's what he means," says Jim.

"That's the idea exactly, Cap'n," says Rat. "I think Philander might be willin' to do that."

"Is that so!" says I, sarcastic. "Well, well! I want to know! But, say, Ratty, ain't you takin' an awful lot of trouble on Foster's account?

You're turrible unselfish and disinterested all to once; or else there's a n.i.g.g.e.r in the woodpile somewheres. Where do you come in on this?"

He looked pretty average cheap. He fussed and fumed for a minute and then he blurts out his reason. "Well, I'll tell you, Cap'n," he says.

"Philander's about the best friend I've got in this b.u.m town and I get more solid comfort in his saloon than anywheres else. If he's drove out of Ostable, I'll be lonesomer than the grave. I don't want him to go.