"I guess it's about seven miles to Mountain City up to the north, and about eleven to Hargus. Hargus is down south."
Jimmy thought for a moment and then said, winningly, "And do you think you could drive me with old Bill as far as Mountain City?"
"Not on your life! Me drive you there? Humph! What's the matter with Jones? He runs a livery stable. I deliver groceries for the Emporium and—say! Mister!—if they find out I drove you down here for that five dollars I ain't got yet, I'd get fired! Now about that five, did you get change?"
Jimmy appreciated that boy's business sense and gave him a five dollar bill that caused the young man much glee.
"Now," said Jimmy, cajolingly, "if you were to drive me to Mountain City, and I were to give you ten, and you were to go back to the Emporium with a letter I would write them when we got to Mountain City, a letter that would cause them to pat you on the back and maybe make you a clerk in the store; or if they didn't do that and fired you, and I was to get you a nice job somewhere in New York, maybe you might find the way to Mountain City, eh?"
The boy suddenly stopped masticating, and looked at him doubtfully. Jimmy assumed his most seductive grin, took his wallet from his pocket and exposed several bills, and fingered them with something like a caress.
"I could find the way all right, and I guess the roads could be got across somehow, and I'd like to make that money—Gee! I never had that much in my life! But—somehow it don't look square to treat the Emporium that way!"
Suddenly Jimmy was aware of a rumbling and roaring and puffing, and saw the expected freight train approaching. It whistled at the tank, true to form, and Jimmy ran across to the edge of the platform as it came panting along, and stared at it wistfully. He wished that he were expert in boarding trains, and then, as it passed, decided that it must be traveling at a rate of at least a hundred miles an hour, although it was barely doing fifteen. He made a desperate clutch at the rails of the caboose, felt as if his arm had been jerked from its socket and his heels into the air, and then found himself sitting in the middle of the track with his hat some ten or fifteen feet away and a cooling mixture of snow and cinders up his trousers legs. He got up, felt himself over to learn that he was unbroken, and recovered his hat.
"By gee whiz!" he exclaimed. "Never knew it was so hard to hop aboard one of those things before. Hoboes have it on me all right! My education's been neglected."
His solicitous friend, the boy, had come to see if there was anything left of him and said, "Hope you ain't hurted much, Mister? Humph! I could have caught her all right, I bet you! You don't know how. The minute you catch hold you want to jump. If you wait you can't do nothin'. But I'll say you did look funny, all right, with your heels and your coat tails and your hat all flyin' at onct!"