CHAPTER I
At the beginning of the long twilight of a summer evening, Sam McPherson, a tall big−boned boy of thirteen,
with brown hair, black eyes, and an amusing little habit of tilting his chin in the air as he walked, came upon
the station platform of the little corn−shipping town of Caxton in Iowa. It was a board platform, and the boy
walked cautiously, lifting his bare feet and putting them down with extreme deliberateness on the hot, dry,
cracked planks. Under one arm he carried a bundle of newspapers. A long black cigar was in his hand.
In front of the station he stopped; and Jerry Donlin, the baggage−man, seeing the cigar in his hand, laughed,
and slowly drew the side of his face up into a laboured wink.
"What is the game to−night, Sam?" he asked.
Sam stepped to the baggage−room door, handed him the cigar, and began giving directions, pointing into the
baggage−room, intent and business− like in the face of the Irishman's laughter. Then, turning, he walked
across the station platform to the main street of the town, his eyes bent on the ends of his fingers on which he
was making computations with his thumb. Jerry looked after him, grinning so that his red gums made a splash
of colour on his bearded face. A gleam of paternal pride lit his eyes and he shook his head and muttered
admiringly. Then, lighting the cigar, he went down the platform to where a wrapped bundle of newspapers lay
against the building, under the window of the telegraph office, and taking it in his arm disappeared, still
grinning, into the baggage−room.
Sam McPherson walked down Main Street, past the shoe store, the bakery, and the candy store kept by Penny
Hughes, toward a group lounging at the front of Geiger's drug store. Before the door of the shoe store he
paused a moment, and taking a small note−book from his pocket ran his finger down the pages, then shaking
his head continued on his way, again absorbed in doing sums on his fingers. |
