Kilo. Part 6

"When me an' Sammy got down to Gallops Junction we found that as a munic.i.p.ality of art an' beauty it was a red-hot fizzle, but as a red-hot, sizzling sandheap it was the leader of the world. As near as we could judge from a premature look at the depot platform the princ.i.p.al occupations of the grizzly inhabitants was pickin' sand burrs from the inside rim of their pants-leg. It was a dreary village, but Sammy restrained my unconscious impulse to get right aboard the train again.

He had that joyful light of combat in them blue eyes of his, an' he looked at that bunch of paintless houses that was dumped around the Gallops Junction Hotel like Columbus must have looked at Plymouth Rock when he landed there.

"I had an immediate notion that the thing for me to do was to go over to the hotel, an' sit in the shade there, an' study the inhabitants a while, an' get the gauge of 'em, an' learn their manners an' customs, before harshly thrustin' myself into their bosoms, so I went an' did it; but Sammy proceeded immediate to visit their homes with the 'Wage of Sin' in one hand an' the torch of culture in the other.

"The more I set under the board awning of that hotel the less I felt like goin' for the to uplift the populace, so I went calmly an'

respectfully to sleep, like everybody else in sight, an' the gentle hours sizzled past like rows of hot griddles.

"It was contiguous to five o'clock when I woke up, an' I had put three hours of blissful ignorance into the past, an' I seen it was too late to begin my labors of helpfulness that day. I crossed my legs the other way from what they had been crossed, an' I was about to extend my ruminations to other thoughts, when I noticed a young female exit out of a grocery store across the road. She had a basket of et ceterys on her arm, an' a face that was as beautiful as a ham sandwich looks to a man after a forty days' fast. I recognized her right away as the prettiest girl of my life's experience, an' as she stepped out I slid out of my chair an' made up my mind to make a disposal of one copy of that book as soon as she struck home.

"She went into her house at the back door, as most folks do, an' before she slid the basket off her plump but modest arm, she looked up in surprise to see what gentlemanly visitor was knockin' the paint off the screen door with his knuckles. The glad object that her eyes beheld was me, smilin' an' amiable, with one hand shyly feeling if my necktie was loose, while the other concealed behind my back the interesting volume ent.i.tled the 'Wage of Sin.'

"I won't circ.u.mlocute about how I got in and got set down on a chair alongside of the kitchen stove. Approaching the female species promptly and slick was my hard card always. So there I set, face to face with that beautiful specimen of female bric-a-brac, and about two inches from a ten-horse-power cook stove in full blossom. It was a warm day, and extry warm on the side of me next that stove. The night side of me felt like sudden fever aggravated by applications of breaths from the orthodox bit of brimstone, and even my off side was perspirating some.

"Thus situated before that young female lady, I was baked but joyous, and I set right in to sell her a 'Wage of Sin.'

"'Ma genully buys books when we buy any, but we never do,' she says.

"'Your ma in now?' I asks, respectful, but in a way to show that her eyes and hair wasn't being wasted on no desert hermit.

"'Yes, she's in,' she says. 'Looks like it's guna rain.'

"'Its some few warm,' I says, s.h.i.+fting my most cooked side a little.

'Can I converse with your ma?'

"'Only in spirit,' she says. 'Otherwise she's engaged.'

"'Dead?' I asks, her words seeming to imply her ma's having departed hence.

"'Oh, no,' she says, smiling. 'She's in the front room, talking. She has a very previous engagement with a gent, and can't break away.'

"'You'll do just as well,' I says, 'if not better. You have that intellectual look that I always spot on the genooine lover of reading matter.'

"'If you are gun to talk book, you better git right down to business and talk book' she says, 'because when I whoop up that stove to git supper, as I'm gun to soon, it's liable to git warm in this kitchen.'

"I took a look at the cooking apparatus, and decided that she knew what she was conversing about. I liked the way she jumped right into the fact that I had a few things to say about books, too. She was an up-and-coming sort, and that's my sort. It's up-and-comingness that has made the Kilo Hotel what it is.

"'All right, sister,' I says, 'this book is the famous "Wage of Sin."'

"'No?" she exlamates. 'Not the "Wage of Sin"? The celebrated volume by our fellow Iowan, Mr. What's-his-name?'

"'The same book!' I says, glad to know its knowledge had pa.s.sed far down the State. 'Price one-dollar-fifty per each. A gem of purest razorene.

A rhymed compendium of wit, information, and highly moral so-forths. Ten thousand verses, printed on a new style rotating duplex press, and bound up in pale-gray calico. Let me quote you that sweet couplet about the flood:

"I hear the mother in her grief Imploring heaven for relief As up the mountain-side she drags Herself by mountain peaks and crags."

"'When I wrote that--'

"'When you wrote that!' she cries joyous, stopping to gaze at me. 'What!

Do I see before me a real, genooine author? Do I see in our humble but not chilly kitchen a reely trooly author?'

"'Yes'm,' I says, modest, like G. W. when is papa caught him executing the cherry tree. 'I wrote it. I am the author. Here, as you see me now, in tropical but dripping diffidence, I am the author of that tome. It's a warm day.'

"She stood in my proximity and explored me with her eyes.

"'An author!' she says, stunned but pleased. 'A real live author! My!

But it is hard for me to grasp a realization of that fact. So you wrote it?'

"'Yes'm,' I says again. 'I done it.'

"'So young, too,' she says. 'Genius is cert'nly a wonderful phenomenus.'

"'It's easy when you know how,' I says off-hand like. 'Book-writing is born in us. When we get warmed up to it it's no trick at all. An author can't no more help authorizing than a stray pup can help scratching.'

"'But,' she says, 'it must be true what I've heard about authorizing being a poor paying job.'

"'Why?' I asks, being suspicious.

"'Because,' she says, 'if it wasn't you wouldn't be touring around to sell your own books after you've wrote them. That is hard work. Now, I have to stay in this kitchen and perspire because I have to, but if you was rich off your books you wouldn't sit on that chair and get all stewed up. I can see that.'

"'What you can't see,' I says, 'is that I came here just because I was the writer of this here composition. Money I don't desire to wish for.

Being a rich man and a philanthropist, I give all I make off of this book to the poor. But it ain't everybody can experience the satisfiedness of seeing a reely genooine author. So I travel around exhibiting myself for the good of the public. And as a special and extraordinary thing--a sort of guarantee to one and all that they have seen a genooine living author--I write my autograph in each and every volume of this book that I sell at the small sum of one-fifty per.

Think of it! Ten thousand verses; moral, intellectooal, and witty; cloth cover, and the author's own autograph written by himself, all for one-fifty. The autograph of the famous boy author.'

"'That's a big bargain,' she says, thoughtful.

"'Jigantic,' I says

"'Genius is cert'nly a wonderful phenomenus,' she repeats again, dreamy.

"'Ain't it!' I responds, sniffing to see if it was my pants that was scorching. 'Will you have one volume?'

"She hesitated, and then she says, 'No. No, I don't dast to. Not yet.

Not till I see how ma comes out. Mebby she'll purchase one before she gits through being talked to.'

"I set straight upward on my hotly warmed chair. 'Being talked to!' I says, astonished.

"'Yes,' says the sweet sample of girl. 'Your son, you know, Mister Samuel Mills; he's in the front room interviewing ma.'

"'My son!' I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.es weakly, the thermometer in my spinal backbone going up ten thousand degrees hotter.

"'Such an oldish son, too,' she says, sinfully joyous, 'for such a youngish father. He must have been two years old the day you were born.

Genius is cert'nly a wonderful phenomenus!'

"I set there a minute, wilted, but nervous. Then I got hot, and arose in anger.

"'My son!' I says, scornful. 'So that's what he says, it is? Disgracing his father in that way! All right for him! I disown him out of my family. And I furthermore remark that he ain't my son, nor never was.'

"'Well,' she says, 'you needn't get so hot about it. He's a hard worker.