“I've heard you tell all this before, Pap.” he said, “and about when the first stage come through here from across the mountains.”
The old man caught eagerly at his last words. “Yes, and I rid on it too! I rid on the fust stage coach from across the mountings, and I'm a going to live to ride on the fust railroad. They're building the 'butments for the new bridge down by the old kivered bridge now.” His beady eyes were wonderfully brilliant. “I reckon you're a stranger here?”
“Well, no, I'm old Tom Rogers's son.”
And by nightfall, all Benson knew that Truman Rogers, who had gone to Texas, a raw stripling some twenty years before, had returned home from California.
CHAPTER FOUR
AS night came on the weather changed abruptly, and a cold drizzle set in.
At his red-brick tavern, Levi Tucker, in a splint-bottom chair, dozed in front of his bar. The rain now falling in torrents and driven by a strong wind, splashed loudly against the closely-shuttered windows. The sperm oil in the dingy reeking lamps, burnt noisily, protestingly. There was a steady drip from the eave troughs; and the gutters were roaring rivers of muddy water.
The innkeeper sat with his feet thrust far out, and his fat freckled hands peacefully clasped before him. The rain had served to keep people in doors, and there was a strong counter attraction at the church, just around the corner, where the apostle of a new and preposterous propaganda, known as the Temperance Movement, was lecturing.