The Woman-Haters Part 10

It was not a large kitchen, and Job was distinctly a large dog. Also, he was suspicious of further a.s.saults with the fire shovel and had endeavored to find a hiding place under the table. In crawling beneath this article of furniture he had knocked off a sheet of the fly paper.

This had fallen "b.u.t.ter side down" upon his back, and stuck fast. He reached aft to pull it loose with his teeth and had encountered a second sheet laid on a chair. This had stuck to his neck. Job was an apprehensive animal by nature and as the result of experience, and his nerves were easily unstrung. He forgot the shovel, forgot the human whom he had been fearfully trying to propitiate, forgot everything except the dreadful objects which clung to him and pulled his hair. He rolled from beneath the table, a shrieking, kicking, snapping cyclone. And that kitchen was no place for a cyclone.

He rolled and whirled for an instant, then scrambled to his feet and began running in widening circles. Brown tried to seize him as he pa.s.sed, but he might as well have seized a railroad train. Another chair, also loaded with fly paper, upset, and Job added a third sheet to his collection. This one plastered itself across his nose and eyes. He ceased running forward and began to leap high in the air and backwards.

The net containing the big lobster fell to the floor. Then John Brown fled to the open air, leaned against the side of the building and screamed with laughter.

Inside the kitchen the uproar was terrific. Howls, shrill yelps, thumps and crashes. Then came a crash louder than any preceding it, a splash of water across the sill, and from the doorway leaped, or flew, an object steaming and dripping, fluttering with fly paper, and with a giant lobster clamped firmly to its tail. The lobster was knocked off against the door post, but the rest of the exhibit kept on around the corner of the house, shrieking as it flew. Brown collapsed in the sand and laughed until his sides ached and he was too weak to laugh longer.

At last he got up and staggered after it. He was still laughing when he reached the back yard, but there he stopped laughing and uttered an exclamation of impatience and some alarm.

Of Job there was no sign, though from somewhere amid the dunes sounded yelps, screams and the breaking of twigs as the persecuted one fled blindly through the bayberry and beachplum bushes. But Brown was not anxious about the dog. What caused him to shout and then break into a run was the sight of Joshua, the old horse, galloping at top speed along the road to the south. Even his sedate and ancient calm had not been proof against the apparition which burst from the kitchen. In his fright he had broken his halter rope and managed--a miracle, considering his age--to leap the pasture fence and run.

That horse was the apple of Seth Atkins's eye. The lightkeeper believed him to be a wonder of strength and endurance, and never left the lights without cautioning his helper to keep an eye on Joshua, "'cause if anything happened to him I'd have to hunt a mighty long spell to find another that could tech him." Brown accepted this trust with composure, feeling morally certain that the only thing likely to happen to Joshua was death from overeating or old age. And now something had happened--Joshua was running away.

There was but one course to take; Brown must leave the government's property in its own care and capture that horse. He had laughed until running seemed an impossibility, but run he must, and did, after a fas.h.i.+on. But Joshua was running, too, and he was frightened. He galloped like a colt, and the a.s.sistant lightkeeper gained upon him very slowly.

The road was crooked and hilly, and the sand in its ruts was deep. Brown would not have gained at all, but for the fact that the horse, from long habit, kept to the roadway and never tried short cuts. His pursuer did, and, therefore, just as Joshua entered the grove on the bluff above Pounddug Slough, Brown caught up with him and made a grab at the end of the trailing halter. He missed it, and the horse took a fresh start.

The road through the grove was overgrown with young trees and bushes, and amid these the animal had a distinct advantage. Not until the outer edge of the grove was reached did the panting a.s.sistant get another opportunity at the rope. This time he seized it and held on.

"Whoa!" he shouted. "Whoa!"

But Joshua did not "whoa" at once. He kept on along the edge of the high, sandy slope. Brown, from the tail of his eye, caught a glimpse of the winding channel of the Slough beneath him, of a small schooner heeled over on the mud flat at its margin, and of the figure of a man at work beside it.

"Whoa!" he ordered once more. "Whoa, Jos.h.!.+ stand still!"

Perhaps the horse would have stood still--he seemed about to do so--but from the distance, somewhere on the road he had just traversed, came a howl, long-drawn and terrifyingly familiar. Joshua heard it, jumped sidewise, jerked at the halter and, as if playing "snap the whip,"

sent his would-be captor heels over head over the edge of the bank and rolling down the sandy slope. The halter flew from Brown's hands, he rolled and b.u.mped and clutched at clumps of gra.s.s and bushes. Then he struck the beach and stopped, spread-eagled on the wet sand.

A voice said: "Well--by--TIME!"

Brown looked up. Seth Atkins, a paint pail in one hand and a dripping brush in the other, was standing beside him, blank astonishment written on his features.

"Well--by time!" said Seth again, and with even stronger emphasis.

The subst.i.tute a.s.sistant raised himself to his knees, rubbed his back with one hand, and then, turning, sat in the sand and returned his superior's astonished gaze with one of equal bewilderment.

"h.e.l.lo!" he gasped. "Well, by George! it's you, isn't it! What are you doing here?"

The lightkeeper put down the pail of paint.

"What am I doin'?" he repeated. "What am I doin'--? Say!" His astonishment changed to suspicion and wrath. "Never you mind what I'm doin'," he went on. "That's my affairs. What are YOU doin' here? That's what I want to know."

Brown rubbed the sand out of his hair.

"I don't know exactly what I am doing--yet," he panted.

"You don't, hey? Well, you'd better find out. Maybe I can help you to remember. Sneakin' after me, wa'n't you? Spyin', to find out what I was up to, hey?"

He shook the wet paint brush angrily at his helper. Brown looked at him for an instant; then he rose to his feet.

"Spyin' on me, was you?" repeated Seth.

"Didn't I tell you that mindin' your own business was part of our d.i.c.ker if you was goin' to stay at Eastboro lighthouse? Didn't I tell you that?"

The young man answered with a contemptuous shrug. Turning on his heel, he started to walk away. Atkins sprang after him.

"Answer me," he ordered. "Didn't I say you'd got to mind your own business?"

"You did," coldly.

"You bet I did! And was you mindin' it?"

"No. I was minding yours--like a fool. Now you may mind it yourself."

"Hold on there! Where you goin'?"

"Back to the lights. And you may go to the devil, or anywhere else that suits your convenience, and take your confounded menagerie with you."

"My menag--What on earth? Say, hold on! Mercy on us, what's that?"

From the top of the bluff came a cras.h.i.+ng and a series of yelps. Through the thicket of beachplum bushes was thrust a yellow head, fringed with torn fragments of fly paper.

"What's that?" demanded the astonished lightkeeper.

Brown looked at the whining apparition in the bushes and smiled maliciously.

"That," he observed, "is Job."

"JOB?"

"Yes." From somewhere in the grove came a thras.h.i.+ng of branches and a frightened neigh. "And that," he continued, "is Joshua, I presume. If there are more Old Testament patriarchs in the vicinity, I don't know where they are, and I don't care. You may hunt for them yourself. I'm going to follow your advice and mind my own business. Good by."

He strode off up the beach. Job, at the top of the bank, started to follow, but a well-aimed pebble caused him to dodge back.

"Hold on!" roared the lightkeeper. "Maybe I made a mistake. Perhaps you wa'n't spyin' on me. Don't go off mad. I . . . Wait!"

But John Brown did not wait. He strode rapidly away up the beach. Seth stared after him. From the grove, where his halter had caught firmly in the fork of a young pine, Joshua thrashed and neighed.

"Aa-oo-ow!" howled Job, from the bushes.

An hour later Atkins, leading the weary and homesick Joshua by the bridle, trudged in at the lighthouse yard. Job, still ornamented with remnants of the fly paper, slunk at his heels. Seth stabled the horse and, after some manoeuvering, managed to decoy the dog down the slope to the boathouse, where he closed the door upon him and his whines. Then he climbed back to the kitchen.

The table was set for one, and in the wash boiler on the range the giant lobster was cooking. Of the subst.i.tute a.s.sistant keeper there was no sign, but, after searching, Seth found him in his room.

"Well?" observed Atkins, gruffly, "we might 's well have supper, hadn't we?"

Brown did not seem interested. "Your supper is ready, I think," he answered. "I tried not to forget anything."