“No, you certainly are not,” he emphasized, and then he opened the flat notebook with almost loving care across his knees.
Young Denny, with the first glimpse he caught of that very first page, comprehended in one illuminating flash the cause of those muffled chuckles which had convulsed that rounded back when he turned the corner of the station-shed a moment before; he even remembered that half-veiled mirth in the eyes of the man who had sat balanced upon the desk in the Tavern office the night before and understood that, too. For the hurriedly penciled sketch, which completely filled the first page of the notebook, needed no explanation––not even that of the single line of writing beneath it, which read:
“I always said he’d make the best of ’em hustle––yes, sir, the very best of ’em!”
It was a picture of Judge Maynard––the Judge Maynard whom Young Denny knew best of all––unctuous 99 of lip and furtively calculating of eye. For all the haste of its creation it was marvelously perfect in detail, and as he stared the corners of the boy’s lips began to twitch until his teeth showed white beneath. The fat man grinned with him.
“Get it, do you?” he chuckled. “Get it, eh?”
And with the big-shouldered figure leaning eagerly nearer he turned through page after page to the end.
“Not bad––not bad at all,” he frankly admired his own handiwork at the finish. “You see, it was like this. I’ve been short on anything like this for a long time––good Rube stuff––and so when Conway came through in his match the other night it looked like a providential opportunity––and it certainly has panned up to expectations.”
Once more he turned to scan the lean face turned toward him, far more openly, far more inquisitively, this time. It perplexed him, bewildered him––this easy certainty and consciousness of power which had replaced the lost-dog light that had driven the smile from his own lips the night before when he had followed Judge Maynard’s beckoning finger.
Hours after the enthusiastic circle about the Tavern stove had dissolved he had labored to reproduce that white, bitter, quivering face at the door, only to find that the very vividness of his memory somehow baffled the cunning of his pencil. There had been more than mere bitterness in those curveless, colorless 100 lips; something more than doubt of self behind the white hot flare in the gray eyes. Now, in the light of day, his eyes searched for it openly and failed to find even a ghost of what it might have been.
“No,” he ruminated gently, and he spoke more to himself than the other, “you don’t stand deuce high with this community. You’re way down on the list.” He hesitated, weighing his words, suddenly a little doubtful as to how far he might safely venture. “I––I guess you’ve––er––disappointed them too long, haven’t you?”