"You've plenty of time," raged Pat, "You've only a little five miles
run left. It's a good half hour before light. You're a pair of cowards,
that's whut ye are, and so I'll tell Sam. If I get fired fer not being
there fer the early milk train, there'll be no more fat jobs fer youse.
Now be sure ye do as you're told. Leave the car in the first field
beyond the woods after ye cross the state line, lift yer flash light
and wink three times, count three slow, and wink three times more.
Then beat it! And doncha ferget to go feed that guy! We don't
want he should die on us."
The engine began to mutter. Pat with a farewell string of oaths rolled
off down the road, too sleepy to look behind, and Billy held his breath
and ducked low till the rolling Pat was one with the deep gray of the
morning.
The first streak of light was beginning to show in the East, and the
all-night revellers at the Blue Duck were in the last stages of going
home after a more than usually exciting season, when Billy like the
hardened promise-breaker he felt himself to be, boldly slid in at the
door and disappeared inside the telephone booth behind the last row of
tables in the corner. For leave it to a boy, even though he be not a
frequenter of a place, to know where everything needful is to be found!
He had to wait several minutes to get the Chief of Police in Economy,
and while he waited two gaunt habitues of the Tavern slid into seats at
the table to the left of the booth, ordered drinks and began to discuss
something in a low tone. Billy paid no heed till he happened to hear
his friend's name: "Yep, I seen Mark come in with Cherry early in the evening. He set
right over there and gotter some drink. The girl was mad because he
wouldn't get her what she wanted to drink. I happened to be settin'
direckly in front and I heard her gassin' about it. She tossed her head
and made her eyes look little and ugly like a pig, and once she got up
to go, and he grabbed her hands and made her set down; and just set
there fer sometime alookin' at her hard an' holdin' her han's and
chewin' the rag at her. I don't know what all they was sayin,' fer he
talked mighty low, an' Ike called me to take a hand in the game over
tother side the room, so I didn't know no more till I see him an'
Cherry beatin' it out the side door, an' Dolphin standin' over acrost
by the desk lampin' 'em with his ugly look, an' pretty quick, Dolph he
slid out the other door an' was gone quite some time. When he come back
Cherry was with him, laughin' and makin' eyes, and vampin' away like
she always does, an' him an' her danced a lot after that--"