“Hello there, Lawton!” he shouted. “Come here and help me with this infernal bag, won’t you!”
The man to whom he called had been gazing down the yard at the advancing wayfarers. He looked up now, hesitated for a moment, then came forward slowly, shuffling through the snow to the path. He was a middle-aged, thin, and round-shouldered man, weak and unkempt as to face and hair and beard, with shabby clothes and no overcoat. Although he wore mittens, he still from force of habit had his hands plunged half-way into his trousers pockets. Even where it would have been easy to step over the intermittent drifts and mounds at the sides of the tracks, he shiftlessly pushed his feet through them instead.
“Hello, Hod!” he said slowly, with a kind of melancholy hesitation, “is that you?”
Young Mr. Boyce ignored the foolish question, and indicated the valise with a nod of his head.
“I wish you’d get that thing down to the house, Ben. And take these checks for my trunks, too, will you, and see that they’re brought down. Where is that expressman, anyway? Why isn’t he here, on hand, attending to his business?”
“I don’t know as I can, Hod,” said the man without an overcoat, idly kicking into a heap of mingled cinders and snow with his wet, patched boots, and glancing uneasily down the yard. “I’m down here a-waitin’—for—that is to say, I’ve got somethin’ else to do. Prob’ly you can get some other fellow outside the deepo.”
Mr. Boyce’s answer to this was to add a bright half-dollar to the brass baggage-checks he already held in his hand. The coin was on the top, and Ben Lawton could not help looking at it. The temptation was very great.
“I ought to stay here, you know,” he faltered. “Fact is, honest Injun! I got to stay here! I’m lookin’ for—somebody a-comin’ in on this train.”
“Well, you can look, can’t you, and do this too? There’s no hurry about the things. If they’re home two hours hence it will be time enough.”
“Yes, I know, it might be so as I could do it, later on,” said Lawton, taking one of his hands from his pocket and stretching it tentatively toward the money. Then a second thought prompted him to waver, and he drew back the hand, muttering feebly: “Then, again, it might be so as I couldn’t do it. You better get somebody else. And yet—I don’t know—p’raps—”