Hiram blinked his eyes inquiringly. "New elder?" he repeated.
"Get a few elders to put up here," suggested Mr. Brackett, venomously, "and new management might take a little cuss off'm the reppytation of this tavern." And the guest fell to smoking and muttering.
Even as wisdom sometimes falls from the mouths of babes, so do good ideas occasionally spring from careless sarcasm.
After Mr. Brackett had retired Hiram discussed the matter of the impending elder with Cap'n Sproul, the Cap'n not warming to the proposition.
"But I tell you if we can get that elder here," insisted Hiram, "and explain it to him and get him to stay, he's goin' to look at it in the right light, if he's got any Christian charity in him. We'll entertain him free, do the right thing by him, tell him the case from A to Z, and get him to handle them infernal wimmen. Only an elder can do it. If we don't he may preach a sermon against us. That'll kill our business proposition deader'n it is now. If he stays it will give a tone to the new management, and he can straighten the thing out for us."
Not only did Cap'n Sproul fail to become enthusiastic, but he was so distinctly discouraging that Hiram forbore to argue, feeling his own optimistic resolution weaken under this depressing flow of cold water.
He did not broach the matter the next morning. He left the Cap'n absorbed and busy in his domain of pots, set his jaws, took his own horse and pung, and started betimes for the railroad-station two miles away. On the way he overtook and passed, with fine contempt for their podgy horse, a delegation from the W.T.W.'s.
On the station platform they frowned upon him, and he scowled at them. He realized that his only chance in this desperate venture lay in getting at the elder first, and frisking him away before the women had opportunity to open their mouths. A word from them might check operations. And then, with the capture once made, if he could speed his horse fast enough to allow him an uninterrupted quarter of an hour at the tavern with the minister, he decided that only complete
paralysis of the tongue could spoil his plan.
Hiram, with his superior bulk and his desperate eagerness, had the advantage of the women at the car-steps. He crowded close. It was the white-lawn tie on the first passenger who descended that did the business for Hiram. In his mind white-lawn ties and clergymen were too intimately associated to admit of error. He yanked away the little man's valise, grabbed his arm, and rushed him across the platform and into the pung's rear seat. And the instant he had scooped the reins from the dasher he flung himself into the front seat and was away up the road, larruping his horse and ducking the snow-cakes that hurtled from the animal's hoofs.