For a long time Batty stood in the door looking out over the darkening desert. The one star swinging above the horizon seemed to point the way to a little home among snow-clad hills, where Christmas gladness had reached its high-tide. Presently as the supper-bell rang, a voice came floating up from the bamboo thicket. Cracked and thin it was, but high and jubilant, as if the old man had forgotten that he had no tobacco for the refreshment of his soul in this world, and no prospect of a mass for its repose in the next.
"Wa-it for me at heav-un's gate,
Sweet Belle Mahone!"
"All right for you, old Jimmy," whispered Batty to himself. "In the game St. Peter keeps the score for, you'll be counted the highest card that this camp holds."
The Second Traveler
Gid Wiggan
In the Wake of a Honeymoon
NO matter what kind of a procession paraded the streets of Gentryville, one unique tailpiece always brought up the rear. As the music of the band died away in the distance, and the pomp of the pageant dwindled down to the last straggling end, necks about to be relieved of their long tension invariably turned for one more look. It was then that old Gid Wiggan drove by in his Wild-cat Liniment wagon, as unfailing as the Z that ends the alphabet.
Lank and stoop-shouldered, with a long, thin beard that reached his lap, and a high, bell-crowned hat pulled down to meet his flabby, protruding ears, he of himself was enough to provoke a laugh; but added to this he bore aloft on a pole the insignia that proclaimed his calling. It was a stuffed wild-cat, shelf-worn and weather-beaten, glaring with primeval fierceness with its one glass eye, and wearing a ridiculously meek expression on the side that had been bereft.