CHAPTER XVI
Colonel Martin Culpepper was standing with, one foot on the window ledge in the office of Philemon R. Ward one bright spring morning watching the procession of humanity file into the post-office and out into the street upon the regular business of life. Mrs. Watts McHurdie, a bride of five years and obviously proud of it, hurried by, and Mrs. John Barclay drove down the street in her phaeton; Oscar Fernald, with a pencil behind his ear, came out of his office licking an envelope and loped into the post-office and out like a dog looking for his bone; and then a lank figure sauntered down the street, stopping here and there to talk with a passerby, stepping into a stairway to light a cigar, and betimes leaning languidly against an awning post in the sun and overhauling farmers passing down Main Street in their wagons.
"He's certainly a gallus-looking slink," ejaculated the colonel.
The general, writing at his desk, asked, "Who?"
"Our old friend and comrade in arms, Lige Bemis." At the blank look on the general's face the colonel shook his head wearily. "Don't know what a gallus-looking slink is, do you? General, the more I live with you damn Yankees and fight for your flag and die for your country, sir, the more astonished I am at your limited and provincial knowledge of the United States language. Here you are, a Harvard graduate, with the Harvard pickle dripping off your ears, confessing such ignorance of your mother-tongue. General, a gallus-looking slink is four hoss thieves, three revenue officers, a tin pedler, and a sheep-killing dog, all rolled into one man. And as I before remarked, our beloved comrade, Lige Bemis, is certainly a gallus-looking slink."
"Far be it from me," continued the colonel, "residing as I may say in a rather open and somewhat exposed domicile—a glass house in fact—to throw stones at Elijah Westlake Bemis,—far be it." The colonel patted himself heroically on the stomach and laughed. "Doubtless, while I haven't been a professional horse thief, nor a cattle rustler, still, probably, if the truth was known, I've done a number of things equally distasteful—I was going to say obnoxious—in the sight of Mr. Bemis, so we'll let that pass." The colonel stretched his suspenders out and let them flap against the plaits of his immaculate shirt. "But I will say, General, that as I see it, it will be a heap handier for me to explain to St. Peter at the gate the things I've done than if he'd ask me about Lige's record."
The general scratched along, without answering, and the colonel looked meditatively into the street; then he began to smile, and the smile glowed into a beam that bespread his countenance and sank into a mood that set his vest to shaking "like a bowl full of jelly." "I was just thinking," he said to nobody in particular, "that if Lige was jumped out of his grave right quick by Gabriel and hauled up before St. Peter and asked to justify my record, he'd have some trouble too—considerable difficulty, I may say. I reckon it's all a matter of having to live with your sins till you get a good excuse thought up."
The general pushed aside his work impatiently and tilted back in his chair. "Come, Martin Culpepper, come, come! That won't do. You know better than that. What's the use of your pretending to be as bad as Lige Bemis? You know better and I know better and the whole town knows better. He's little, and he's mean, and snooping, and crooked as a dog's hind leg. Why, he was in here yesterday—actually in here to see me. Yes, sir—what do you think of that? Wants to be state senator."
"So I hear," smiled the colonel.