“Well, that settles it with me,” said Harvey 28 Tucker. “I shall go back with it the first Thursday it goes.”
“Same with me,” said a man named West. “I know when I’ve got enough, and I’ve got enough of Track’s End.”
Mr. Clerkinwell, who happened to be present, laughed cheerfully. He was by far the oldest man left, but he always seemed the least discouraged.
“Oh,” he said to the others, “that’s nothing. The train does us no good except to bring the mail, and it can bring it just as well once a week as twice. We were really pampered with that train coming to us twice a week,” and he laughed again and went out.
It was just another week and a day that poor Mr. Clerkinwell was taken sick. He had begun boarding at the hotel, and that night did not come to supper. I went over to his rooms to see what the trouble was. I found him on the bed in a high fever. His talk was rambling and flighty. It was a good deal about his daughter Florence, whom he had told me of before. Then he wandered to other matters.
“It’s locked, Judson, it’s locked, and 29 nobody knows the combination; and there aren’t any burglars here,” he said. I knew he was talking about the safe in the room below.
We all did what we could for him, which was little enough. The doctor had gone away weeks before. He grew worse during the night. The train had come in that day, and I asked Burrdock if he did not think it would be best to send him away on it in the morning to his friends at St. Paul, where he could get proper care. Burrdock agreed to this plan. Toward morning the old gentleman fell asleep, and we covered him very carefully and carried him over to the train on his bed. He roused up a little in the car and seemed to realize where he was.
“Take care of the bank, Judson, take good care of it,” he said in a sort of a feeble way. “You must be banker as well as hotel-keeper now.”
I told him I would do the best I could, and he closed his eyes again.
It was cold and blizzardy when the train left at nine o’clock. Tucker and West were not the only ones of our little colony who took the train; there were five others, making, with 30 Mr. Clerkinwell, eight, and leaving us six, to wit: Tom Carr, the agent; Frank Valentine, the postmaster; Jim Stackhouse; Cy Baker; Andrew, the Norwegian, and myself, Judson Pitcher.