Mr. Shark showed a pale streak of smile. “Come around at one o’clock.”
My “Thank you” was drowned by a late passenger. It came from Fargo, for Napoleon III dismounted. He said: “Hello. Where are you going, boy?”
“I am just taking the caboose of the through freight for Macon. But I have a few minutes.”
“How the devil did you get here, sir?” I told him the story in brief. We were in front of the fire now. “How are you going to make this next train? I would like to go with you.”
I could not tell whether he meant it or not. Right beside us Mr. Flagman was asleep for all night, with his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands. Stretched above Flagman’s back was Mr. Vermont, like a school-boy asleep on his desk. I said, “Do you see the gentleman on the bottom of the pile? He is the Grand Lama of Cabooseville. You have to ask him for the password. The man on top is the sublime sub-Lama.”
Napoleon looked dubiously at them, and the two bottles in the wood-box. He gave me good words of farewell, finishing with mock-gravity: “Of course I respect you, sir, in not giving the password without orders from your superior, sir.”
And now I boarded the caboose, hurrying to surprise the Macon cavalier. He expected me in three weeks, walking. But the caboose did one hundred and fifty miles in thirteen hours, and all the way my heart spun like a glorified musical top. Alas, this is a tale of drink. I filled the coffee-pot and drained it an infinite number of times, all because my poor broken heart was healed. The stove was the only person in the world out of humor. He was mad because his feet were nailed to the floor. He tried to spill the coffee, and screamed, “Now you’ve done it” every time we rounded a curve. The caboose-door slammed open every seven minutes, Shark and his white man and his negro rushing in from their all-night work for refreshment.
The manner of serving coffee in a caboose is this: there are three tin cups for the white men. The negro can chew sugar-cane, or steal a drink when we do not look. There is a tin box of sugar. If one is serving Mr. Shark, one shakes a great deal of sugar into the cup, and more down one’s sleeve, and into one’s shoes and about the rocking floor. One becomes sprinkled like a doughnut, newly-fried, and fragrant with splashed coffee. The cinders that come in on the breath of the shrieking night cling to the person. But if you are serving Mr. Shark you do not mind these things. You pour his drink, you eat his bread and cheese, thanking him from the bottom of your stomach, not having eaten anything since the ginger-snaps of long ago. You solemnly touch your cup to his, as you sit with him on the red disembowelled car cushions, with the moss gushing out. You wish him the treasure-heaps of Aladdin or a racing stable in Ireland, whichever he pleases.
Let all the readers of this tale who hope to become Gentlemen of the Road take off collars and cuffs, throw their purses into the ditch, break their china, and drink their coffee from tinware to the health of Mr. Shark, our friend with the apple-green eyes. Yea, my wanderers, the cure for the broken heart is gratitude to the gentleman you would hate, if you had your collar on or your purse in your pocket when you met him. Though there was heavy betting against him, he becomes the Hero in a whirlwind finish. Patriarch and Flagman disputing for second, decision for Flagman.