"I shall sell as little liquor as possible," the druggist says,
conceiving the drift of Corkey's ideas.
"Pardner, you must have been a hard drinker yourself. How did your
voice get so husky?"
"It was so always."
"It was so the first day I met you. Remember the dedication?"
"Yes; do you remember the bank?"
"Yep. Don't you know I tell you I was going to find that yawl?"
"I do."
"Well, I find it."
Does David Lockwin color? Or are those features forever crimson?
"You do look like a man as has been a red-hot sport in his day. Ever
do anything in the ring? Let me try that red liquor of yours. Let's
see if it tears. Oh, yes, about the yawl. I just go to the widow the
other day and ask her for three hundred cases on the search. Well, she
give me the three hundred and want me to take more, and I go right to
Collingwood. The duck he show me the boat, and you bet your sweet life
I hid her where she never will be seen. What's the use of tearing up
the widow's feelings again?"
"You did right!" says the husky voice, the lover all the time wishing
the discovery had been published. He feels like a claimant. He is not
sure the world would believe David Lockwin to be alive if he could
prove it.
"Chalmers, I'm going to tell you something that I haven't said to
nobody. I hid that boat, and I threw away big money--I know I did.
But I could get all the money I wanted of her--a free graft. Give me
another slug of that budge."
The druggist is filling a small graduate with whisky for Corkey. What
is Corkey about to say?
"They're having high old times in Russia. That was a great bomb they
git in on his nobs last winter."
"The czar? Yes."
"I reckon they're going to git the feller they've got on top there now,
too, don't you? They say he put on ten crowns yesterday. What do they
call it? The coronation, yes. What's the name of the place? Moscow,
yes."
The druggist is less confused.
"Wouldn't it be funny if the czar wasn't dead. But say, pardner, what
would you say if I went over there and told my widow I didn't believe
her old man was dead at all? Would she give me the gaff? Would she
git mad?"
The druggist is busy finding a cork for a bottle. At last he comes to
the light to try the cork. He is behind a show-case. Corkey is in
front of the, case holding a newspaper in hand, out of which he has
been reading of the coronation. His black eyes seem to pierce David
Lockwin's face. David Lockwin looks back--in hope, if any feeling can
show itself in that veiled countenance.
"He ain't dead! Not much! Can't tell me! I don't bury boats for
nothing. I tell you I think a heap of her, and she slung herself so on
that hospital and on that other thing there, out north, that I'd hate
to give her away. What was that yawl buried for? Nobody see it and it
was worth money, too. What was it buried for? Now I never tell you
the story of the night on the old tub. He sit just so."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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