Benton's Venture

by Ralph Henry Barbour

The carriage dealer became indignant, expatiated on the merits of the vehicle and ended by chopping off five dollars from the first price. Willard shook his head indifferently and offered eighteen. Mr. Saunders shrugged his shoulders and started away with his implements. Tom whispered to Willard to offer him twenty. Willard shook his head. “It’s his turn now,” he replied.

Having deposited the jack and wrench where they belonged, Mr. Saunders wandered back again. “I tell you what I’ll do, boys,” he said. “’Tain’t like you were strangers. You’re customers of mine. I’ll meet you more than half-way. Take her for twenty-two fifty.”

There was a moment of silence. Jerry was plainly anxious, for he had set his heart on embarking in the express business. Tom twitched Willard’s sleeve. “We’d better take it, hadn’t we?” he whispered.

“Tell you what we’ll do, Mr. Saunders,” announced Willard. “We’ll give you twenty dollars and not a cent more. That’s all it would be worth to us. What do you say?”

“All right, take her along. If all my customers were like you I’d be in the poorhouse long ago.”

After that there was just time to hurry to the station in time for the 1:57 and so the rest was left to Jerry and Spider. “You don’t need to come down until we tell you,” instructed Tom, “because there may not be any trunks on these trains. But you get Julius Cæsar and haul the wagon over to your place. Then, if there’s any work to be done, we’ll stop and let you know.”

But Jerry didn’t intend to miss anything, and somehow he and Spider managed to hitch the horse to the wagon—luckily Mr. Lippit had a heavy harness which just suited—and reach the station just as the 2:06 pulled out. Jerry held the reins and Spider sat proudly beside him. Between the gayly-painted shafts ambled Julius Cæsar. Julius Cæsar had been a dappled gray at one time, but now he was almost white. He was short and ridiculously fat and had an absurd way of bobbing his head up and down as he went. Still, as far as appearances were concerned, Julius Cæsar was quite a success, and, hitched to the brilliantly-hued wagon, made a good showing as he ambled and bobbed his way to the platform. Pat Herron viewed the outfit with surprise and chagrin. Later on his gift of repartee returned to him, but for a few minutes he was plainly disconcerted. The Ark was quickly filled, Willard remaining behind to superintend the loading of the baggage, and chugged away uptown. Pat Herron, with a last lingering look at the express wagon, followed after the automobile, and Willard, Jerry and Spider proudly presented the checks and loaded four big sample trunks. That was a triumphant journey uptown, Jerry guiding Julius Cæsar, Willard sitting beside him, and Spider perched on a trunk. The horse was evidently perturbed. Never before had he been hitched to such a vehicle, and, doubtless, never before had he been called on to pull so heavy a load. He resented it and showed it. Every few minutes he turned his head and looked reproachfully at Jerry. Jerry was heartless.

“Go on, you old antiquity,” Jerry would bawl, with a flick of the whip. “Think we’ve got all day to do this? Get ap, Cæsar!”

Whereupon Julius Cæsar, nodding a little more vehemently, would change from a walk to a shuffling trot and maintain the latter until, in his judgment, Jerry had forgotten his unseemly haste. It took them fully twenty minutes to reach the hotel, but the journey was filled with interest. Two small urchins tried to steal a ride and had to be dislodged with the whip by Spider; Teddy Thurston followed them for a block on Main Street and offered unsolicited advice on the subject of driving, and finally descended to sarcasm and rude jesting; Mr. Wells, emerging from the post-office, stared in alarmed surprise at the sight of his son personally conducting a load of trunks through the principal thoroughfare, and, just as they came opposite the Court House, the fire engine and hose-reel swung around the corner of Pine Street and almost demolished Julius Cæsar and the new wagon. By some stroke of good luck Jerry managed to induce Julius Cæsar aside in the nick of time and the engine passed harmlessly by about two inches from their hubs! It was at that moment that Spider deserted. He explained afterwards that he had thought he was going to be killed and had jumped for safety, but the fact that he didn’t show up again until the fire in Coakley’s cigar store on Spruce Street had been put out led the others to believe he had preferred the attractions of the fire to the labor of unloading trunks.

So the new wagon entered upon a career of usefulness, proudly driven by Jerry, and protestingly pulled by Julius Cæsar, who, after months of idleness in a box-stall, infrequently interrupted by an evening jog through town in front of the side-bar buggy, could have held forth eloquently on the subject of cruelty to aged horses had he been able to talk boy-language! At the end of a week Tom and Willard found that, after paying for feed for the horse and a dollar and a half to Jerry for his services, they had profited to the extent of four dollars and twenty-five cents, at which rate, as Willard pointed out, the wagon would be paid for in a month!