One woman offered to carry it for eighty dollars; another for seventy; one big boy offered for sixty-five; he’d make the girls at home do the work, he said,—they hadn’t anything else to do,—and he would give them each a new ribbon to pay for it: and between you and me, I am very glad that that boy didn’t get the job.
Without saying a word to his family about it, Que made up his mind that he would carry the mail himself. When the others sent in their bids he sent in his, for fifty dollars. So it happened that Que was mail-carrier. He was so little and bow-legged, that there were not many things that he could do; for instance, he couldn’t run. His head and feet were very large, and his arms and intermediate body very small; therefore he could dream and wonder what he should do when he grew up, and walk (with care) as much as he pleased, but was not a favorite among the boys in playing games.
Of course he was not baptized into the name Que, but was called, by his parents and the christening minister, John Quincy Adams Pond, Jr.; named for his father, you see. They began to call him Que before he was out of his babyhood; for they had one boy named John Lee, but as they always called him Lee, they entirely forgot that fact till after the ceremony of Que’s christening. And they really weren’t much to blame, for they had nine other boys, and poor memories; and though both are misfortunes, they can’t be helped. To avoid mixing their two Johns, they called one Lee and the other Que.
Que looked upon seven miles a day as no walk at all, and upon fifty dollars a year as a fortune, and upon “United States mail-carrier” as a title little below “Hon.” or “Esq.” He had hoped, all his life, that he should, some fine day, have a right to one or the other of these titles. Probably the fact that his name already ended with a “Jr.” excited his ambition in that particular direction. Money and dignity seemed to Que the two things most to be desired in life, unless I might add a small family.
Now, we will leave Que’s antecedents behind, and go on to his life while he carried the mail; and a very queer little life it was, as you will say when you get to the end of it, though I don’t know when that will be, for Que isn’t there himself yet. The mail contract was from July 1, 1860, to July 1, 1861, and if your mathematics are in good running order, you will see that that was just a year.
July 1, 1860, was as fine a day in Gingoo as any day in the year; and Que was in as high spirits as on any day in the course of his life. Unfortunately the mail coach reached Gingoo exactly at forty minutes past eleven, unless the driver got drunk or fell asleep, which happened about two hundred and forty days in the year. But whether sober, drunk, or asleep, the four coach horses always stood before Gingoo office door by twelve o’clock at latest.
It makes no difference to you or to me when the coach stood there; but it made a great deal of difference to Que, for twelve o’clock on the finest day in the year, and that day the first of July, is apt to be rather warm; and in the year 1860 it was very warm. Nevertheless, at quarter past twelve, Que started with the bag. I, happening to be at the right side of him, saw only the bag start with Que.
Perhaps you don’t see why Que should have started right in the heat of the day; but if you had been Que, and could have heard all the Pointers clamoring for their mail, you would have started just when Que did. The mail-bag was made of very dark leather, and drew the sun tremendously. Now, as Que had on a pair of light linen pants and a little gray lined coat, of course he ought to have walked between the bag and the sun; but not being a scientific boy, he didn’t think of that, and slung the bag over his sunny shoulder, and from that height it trailed to the ground.
Que walked on as fast as he could, trying not to think too much of the heat and the weight; but the peculiar odor that the sun brought from the leather bag was blown up his nose, and down his throat, and into his ears, by a strong south wind that blew, and before Que had time to think whether he had better or better not, he was lying fast asleep by the side of the road, on the grass; rather he was lying on the mail-bag, and that was lying on the grass. Why didn’t he fall on the other side? For two reasons; first, he was attracted mail-bag way by the sleepy odor before spoken of; and secondly, the weight was all that way, and as he began to sleep before he began to drop, of course the bag was his natural bed when he did drop.
The Point road was lonesome, and it must have been quite an hour before any one came that way. Then a man and two horses, and a cart loaded high with laths, were seen coming over the hill; that is, they would have been seen, if Que hadn’t been asleep just then.