Cy Whittaker's Place

by Joseph Crosby Lincoln

With these division commanders to lead their forces into the enemy's country and with Asaph and Bailey doing what they could to help, Captain Cy's campaign soon became worthy of respectful consideration. For a while Tad Simpson scoffed at the opposition; then he began to work openly for Mr. Snow. Later he marshaled his trusted officers around the pool table in the back room of the barber shop and confided to them that it was anybody's fight and that he was worried.

“It's past bein' a joke,” he said. “It's mighty serious. We've got to hustle, we have. Heman trusted me in this job, and if I fall down it 'll be bad for me and for you fellers, too. I wish he was home to run things himself, but he's got business down South there—some property he owns or somethin'—and says he can't leave. But we must win! By mighty! we've GOT to. So get every vote you can. Never mind how; just get 'em, that's all.”

Captain Cy was thoroughly enjoying himself. The struggle suited him to perfection. He was young, in spite of his fifty-five years, and this tussle against odds, reminding him of other tussles during his first seasons in business, aroused his energies and, as he expressed it, “stirred up his vitals and made him hop round like a dose of 'pain killer.'”

He did not, however, forget Bos'n. He and she had their walks and their pleasant evenings together in spite of politics. He took the child into his confidence and told her of the daily gain, or loss, in votes, as if she were his own age. She understood a little of all this, and tried hard to understand the rest, preaching between times to Georgianna how “the bad men were trying to beat Uncle Cyrus because he was gooder than they, but they couldn't, 'cause everybody loved him so.” Georgianna had some doubts, but she kept them to herself.

Among the things in Bos'n's “box” was a long envelope, sealed with wax and with a lawyer's name printed in one corner. The captain opened it, at Emily's suggestion, and was astonished to find that the inclosure was a will, dated some years back, in which Mrs. Mary Thomas, the child's mother, left to her daughter all her personal property and also the land in Orham, Massachusetts, which had been willed to her by her own mother. There was a note with the will in which Mrs. Thomas stated that no one save herself had known of this land, not even her husband. She had not told him because she feared that, like everything else, it would be sold and the money wasted in dissipation. “He suspected something of the sort,” she added, “but he did not find out the secret, although he—” She had evidently scratched out what followed, but Captain Cy mentally filled in the blank with details of abuse and cruelty. “If anything happens to me,” concluded the widow, “I want the land sold and the money used for Emily's maintenance as long as it lasts.”

The captain went over to Orham and looked up the land. It was a strip along the shore, almost worthless, and unsalable at present. The taxes had been regularly paid each year by Mary Thomas, who had sent money orders from Concord. The self-denial represented by these orders was not a little.

“Never mind, Bos'n,” said Captain Cy, when he returned from the Orham trip. “Your ancestral estates ain't much now but a sand-flea menagerie. However, if this section ever does get to be the big summer resort folks are prophesying for it, you may sell out to some millionaire and you and me'll go to Europe. Meantime, we'll try to keep afloat, if the Harniss Bank don't spring a leak.”

On the day following this conversation he took a flying trip to Ostable, the county seat, returning the same evening, and saying nothing to anyone about his reasons for going nor what he had done while there.

Bos'n's birthday was the eighteenth of November. The captain, in spite of the warmth of his struggle for committee honors, determined to have a small celebration on the afternoon and evening of that day. It was to be a surprise for Emily, and, after school was over, some of her particular friends among the scholars were to come in, there was to be a cake with eight candles on it, and a supper at which ice cream—lemon and vanilla, prepared by Mrs. Cahoon—was to be the principal feature. Also there would be games and all sorts of fun.

Captain Cy was tremendously interested in the party. He spent hours with Georgianna and the Board of Strategy, preparing the list of guests. His cunning in ascertaining from the unsuspecting child who, among her schoolmates, she would like to invite, was deep and guileful.