only a friend,’ says she; ‘but he takes me riding and buys me theatre tickets, and that’s what you never do. Ain’t I to never have any pleasure in life while I can?’ ‘Pass this chatfield-chatfield thing along,’ says Redruth;— ‘hand out the mitt to the Willie with creases in it or you don’t put your slippers under my wardrobe.’
“Now that kind of train orders don’t go with a girl that’s got any spirit. I bet that girl loved her honey all the time. Maybe she only wanted, as girls do, to work the good thing for a little fun and caramels before she settled down to patch George’s other pair, and be a good wife. But he is glued to the high horse, and won’t come down. Well, she hands him back the ring, proper enough; and George goes away and hits the booze. Yep. That’s what done it. I bet that girl fired the cornucopia with the fancy vest two days after her steady left. George boards a freight and checks his bag of crackers for parts unknown. He sticks to Old Booze for a number of years; and then the aniline and aquafortis gets the decision. ‘Me for the hermit’s hut,’ says George, ‘and the long whiskers, and the buried can of money that isn’t there.’
“But that Alice, in my mind, was on the level. She never married, but took up typewriting as soon as the wrinkles began to show, and kept a cat that came when you said ‘weeny — weeny — weeny!’ I got too much faith in good women to believe they throw down the fellow they’re stuck on every time for the dough.” The windmill man ceased.
“I think,” said the lady passenger, slightly moving upon her lowly throne, “that that is a char—”
“Oh, Miss Garland!” interposed Judge Menefee, with uplifted hand, “I beg of you, no comments! It would not be fair to the other contestants. Mr. — er — will you take the next turn?” The Judge addressed the young man who had the Agency.
“My version of the romance,” began the young man, diffidently clasping his hands, “would be this: They did not quarrel when they parted. Mr. Redruth bade her good-by and went out into the world to seek his fortune. He knew his love would remain true to him. He scorned the thought that his rival could make an impression upon a heart so fond and faithful. I would say that Mr. Redruth went out to the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming to seek for gold. One day a crew of pirates landed and captured him while at work, and—”
“Hey! what’s that?” sharply called the passenger who was nobody in particular— “a crew of pirates landed in the Rocky Mountains! Will you tell us how they sailed—”
“Landed from a train,” said the narrator, quietly and not without some readiness. “They kept him prisoner in a cave for months, and then they took him hundreds of miles away to the forests of Alaska. There a beautiful Indian girl fell in love with him, but he remained true to Alice. After another year of wandering in the woods, he set out with the diamonds—”
“What diamonds?” asked the unimportant passenger, almost with acerbity.
“The ones the saddlemaker showed him in the Peruvian temple,” said the other, somewhat obscurely. “When he reached home, Alice’s mother led him, weeping, to a green mound under a willow tree. ‘Her heart was broken when you left,’ said her mother. ‘And what of my rival — of Chester McIntosh?’ asked Mr. Redruth, as he knelt sadly by Alice’s grave. ‘When he found out,’ she answered, ‘that her heart was yours, he pined away day by day until, at length, he started a furniture store in Grand Rapids. We heard lately that he was bitten to death by an infuriated moose near South Bend, Ind., where he had gone to try to forget scenes of civilisation.’ With which, Mr. Redruth forsook the face of mankind and became a hermit, as we have seen.
“My story,” concluded the young man with an Agency, “may lack the literary quality; but what I wanted it to show is that the young lady remained true. She cared nothing for wealth in comparison with true affection. I admire and believe in the fair sex too much to think otherwise.”
The narrator ceased, with a sidelong glance at the corner where reclined the lady passenger.
Bildad Rose was next invited by Judge Menefee to contribute his story in the contest for the apple of judgment. The stage-driver’s essay was brief.
“I’m not one of them lobo wolves,” he said, “who are always blaming on women the calamities of life. My testimony in regards to the fiction story you ask for, Judge, will be about as follows: What ailed Redruth was pure laziness. If he had up and slugged this Percival De Lacey that tried to give him the outside of the road, and had kept Alice in the grape-vine swing with the blind-bridle on, all would have been well. The woman you want is sure worth taking pains for.
“‘Send for me if you want me again,’ says Redruth, and hoists his Stetson, and walks off. He’d have called it pride, but the nixycomlogical name for it is laziness. No woman don’t like to run after a man. ‘Let him come back, hisself,’ says the girl; and I’ll be bound she tells the boy with the pay ore to trot; and then spends her time watching out the window for the man with the empty pocketbook and the tickly moustache.
“I reckon Redruth waits about nine year expecting her to send him a note by a nigger asking him to forgive her. But she don’t. ‘This game won’t work,’ says Redruth; ‘then so won’t I.’ And he goes in the hermit business and raises whiskers. Yes; laziness and whiskers was what done the trick. They travel together. You ever hear of a man with long whiskers and hair striking a bonanza? No. Look at the Duke of Marlborough and this Standard Oil snoozer. Have they got ‘em?
“Now, this Alice didn’t never marry, I’ll bet a hoss. If Redruth had married somebody else she might have done so, too. But he never turns up. She has these here things they call fond memories, and maybe a lock of hair and a corset steel that he broke, treasured up. Them sort of articles is as good as a husband to some women. I’d say she played out a lone hand. I don’t blame no woman for old man Redruth’s abandonment of barber shops and clean shirts.”
Next in order came the passenger who was nobody in particular. Nameless to us, he travels the road from Paradise to Sunrise City.
But him you shall see, if the firelight be not too dim, as he responds to the Judge’s call.
A lean form, in rusty-brown clothing, sitting like a frog, his arms wrapped about his legs, his chin resting upon his knees. Smooth, oakum-coloured hair; long nose; mouth like a satyr’s, with upturned, tobacco-stained corners. An eye like a fish’s; a red necktie with a horseshoe pin. He began with a rasping chuckle that gradually formed itself into words.
“Everybody wrong so far. What! a romance without any orange blossoms! Ho, ho! My money on the lad with the butterfly tie and the certified checks in his trouserings.
“Take ’em as they parted at the gate? All right. ‘You never loved me,’ says Redruth, wildly, ‘or you wouldn’t speak to a man who can buy you the ice-cream.’ ‘I hate him,’ says she. ‘I loathe his side-bar buggy; I despise the elegant cream bonbons he sends me in gilt boxes covered with real lace; I feel that I could stab him to the heart when he presents me with a solid medallion locket with turquoises and pearls running in a vine around the border. Away with him! ’Tis only you I love.’ ‘Back to the cosey corner!’ says Redruth. ‘Was I bound and lettered in East Aurora? Get platonic, if you please. No jackpots for mine. Go and hate your friend some more. For me the Nickerson girl on Avenue B, and gum, and a trolley ride.’
“Around that night comes John W. Croesus. ‘What! tears?’ says he, arranging his pearl pin. ‘You have driven my lover away,’ says little Alice, sobbing: ‘I hate the sight of you.’ ‘Marry me, then,’ says John W., lighting a Henry Clay. ‘What!’ she cries indignantly, ‘marry you! Never,’ she says, ‘until this blows
