“I reckon,” agrees the postmaster. Then, his voice gittin’ holler, like, “But ain’t that the map of Goldstone, with a rip in it?”
It was–tore clean in two!
We wasn’t anxious any. Just the same, we drifted over to the hotel. When we got to the door, we met the clerk comin’ out. “Where’s you’ millionaire friend this mornin’?” we ast him.
“Started fer Chicago last night.”
“What–what’s that?”
“Gone to raise more capital, I guess,” says the clerk. “’Cause he didn’t settle–is comin’ back right off.”
Without nobody sayin’ nothin’ more, we all made up the street to the doctor’s, the crowd growin’ as we went along. Even after bein’ knocked plumb flat with a sledge-hammer, we didn’t know yet what’d bit us. But they was another whopper a-comin’–the doc wasn’t to be found.
“I think,” says the postmaster, swallerin’ hard, “that if we ast the parson––”
Up pipes a kid. “The parson wasn’t to Sunday school this mornin’.”
Fer a spell, we all just looked at each other. Then, the procession formed and moved east–towards the parson’s.