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.
Suddenly, from among the men by the drug store, a
roaring song broke the evening quiet of the street,
and a voice, huge and guttural, brought a smile to
the boy’s lips:
“He washed the windows and he swept
the floor,
And he polished up the handle of the big
front door.
He polished that handle so carefullee,
That now he’s the ruler of the queen’s
navee.”
The singer, a short man with grotesquely wide shoulders,
wore a long flowing moustache, and a black coat, covered
with dust, that reached to his knees. He held
a smoking briar pipe in his hand, and with it beat
time for a row of men sitting on a long stone under
the store window and pounding on the sidewalk with
their heels to make a chorus for the song. Sam’s
smile broadened into a grin as he looked at the singer,
