IT did not matter to George that the Goat Girl had not asked his name. It mattered only that he had seen a great vision and by it been lifted at least one whole cubit toward manhood's fullest stature. It was a long two miles back to the cabbage patch, but miles had now no power to weary him. Big and purposeful, he strode along. Tardy though he was, recreant though he had been, he did not sidle guilty-faced into the kitchen, but stalked in boldly and sat down to his belated dinner. When his mother chided him, he bore it silently, containing himself with noble patience.
Only one thing bade speculation pause. The Goat Girl had warned he must be rich. His pride approved of that as well. It demanded that he must be upon the same plane with her before he could offer himself; and he must do something worth while besides. That was again the instinct of his pride—always to heap the measure full and overflowing. But how was he to get rich as quickly almost as manhood should be reached, for his was an ardent love that would brook no long delay?
The spading fork was in his hands once more as he asked himself this question, but there was the paper under foot to remind him of an unfulfilled duty toward the world's news. Turning the pages he came upon that which had caught his eyes before—nothing more, after all, than a cut of a light spring wagon. But the odd look about it. Why, it had neither shafts, nor tongue, nor whiffletrees, and underneath its body, but atop the running gear, was a junk-like collection of coils and goitres, wens and tuberosities, wires and shafts, chains, gears, and cogs, suggesting some kind of engine. Beneath the cut was the legend, "Horseless Carriage."
George got it on the instant. "A wagon without a horse," he cried aloud. "That's what I said. That's what I said. Ma! Ma! A wagon without a horse!"
He went dashing into the house to thrust the picture under his mother's eyes and to read over her shoulder:
"Our fellow citizen, Charles B. King, has been one of the first men in America to build a gasoline-propelled vehicle, and the very first to operate one on the streets of Detroit. In the past two weeks several runs of the new vehicle have been made on suburban roads, mostly in the night-time to escape the eyes of the curious."
"Now, will you believe me?" exulted the boy, capering before his mother.
"Sakes alive!" declared Mrs. Judson. "What won't they do next?"
"I told you I saw it!" he crowed, pointing to the picture. "It nearly ran over me."
He took the paper out with him again into the garden where, expressing rather the emotions of excitement than the energy of industry, he spaded a row clear across the garden. But with that supreme effort, industry paused content. He beamed once more at the picture of the horseless carriage. It held a strange fascination for him. He felt the elation of a discoverer. He read and reread the news account. It was all too brief.
"Wisht I could see it," he murmured and stared at the nest of machinery. "That's what makes it go, a-course. I wonder what it would be like to ride in it!" At the thought his eyes danced, his voice grew excited, and then a sudden insanity possessed him. "By jinks, I'm a-going to see it!" he announced and kicked down his standing spade. "I'm a-going to see it today. I'll tell Mr. King he nearly run over me, and I'll ask him if I can have a ride in it." The boy's face was shining with the light of a great eagerness. "This old cabbage patch can go to the dickens!" he declared with a defiant look around him.
With a furtive glance over his shoulder at his unsuspecting mother bent over a basket of darning, he stole in for cap and coat, then, with the newspaper containing the picture and the address of Charlie King's shop tightly in his hand, George climbed over the fence and started on a dogged run for the main trunk artery east and west through the city of Detroit. How George Judson, reasonably conscientious and with a healthy awe of his father's disciplinary hand, could so have abandoned duty was something that neither his fascination by the idea of the self-propelled vehicle nor his hatred of the smell of a horse could account for. He did it—that was all; and at about half after two o'clock that day stood before King's red factory building. At various places on the ground floor forges flamed, lathes turned, and men hammered at anvils or before benches, making a terrible racket and seeming to exult in it; but back in the far corner of this ground floor was a vacant space. Into this George's eyes eventually roved, then peered, then stared, while a lump formed in his throat and a singular thrill went downward to his heels. There stood the shaftless vehicle of the newspaper cut.
To the boy's complete surprise no gaping crowd surrounded it—in his fascinated judgment an almost irreverent neglect, an indifference that was near to blasphemy; but true enough it was that few in that day took any particular interest in the marvel of the horseless vehicle. Indeed, it was not regarded as a marvel, but as a joke—a huge, preposterous farce.
As George gazed there was only one man near the vehicle, a person in all-enveloping overalls and a greasy mechanic's cap, who squatted, prying into the intricacies of the machinery, tapping, peering, and occasionally squirting oil. But presently he touched something that seemed to make the machinery blow up in noise, to the accompaniment of clouds of smoke and fumes of most vile odor. It would have taken a steadier nerve than George's to stand his ground against this sudden manifestation of a hurricane in the midriff of an old spring wagon. Instinctively the lad leaped backward toward the door, but when he saw the workmen not even glancing up from forge and lathe, he turned again to look with startled eyes. The wagon was still there, but vibrating with some whirling mechanical force, and the man in overalls still knelt beside it solicitously.
When Charles B. King straightened his back, wiping his hands with a piece of cotton waste and wearing an air of having concluded operations upon his patient for that day, he noticed the boy for the first time—a lad in his first long pants probably, with a reefer jacket, belt unbuttoned, and a cap perched abstractedly on the back of his head. His hands were thrust deep in his pockets, and his face was all absorption, all reverential interest. And Charles B. King in those days could not help but be grateful as a dog to any creature who manifested interest in his machine. Besides, he was fond of boys.
"Hullo, Bub!" he said, and smiled—a confidence-creating smile. "Want to see her go?"
"You bet!" declared George with gusto, yet found himself backing off as the inventor laid his hand upon the seat, but there was something so utterly engaging in Mr. King's twinkling eye as he noticed this rearward movement, that the boy confessed his timidity openly. "I'm kind of 'fraid of her, I guess!" he laughed.
Mr. King laughed also. "So am I, Bub!" he declared. "You never know what kind of a stunt she is going to pull next. Hop into her and let's see what she does this time."
Though fearful, George was not lacking in decision. "I'll chance her," he said and swung into the seat on one side as Mr. King climbed in upon the other.
Gravely the inventor manipulated the steering apparatus to set his front wheels toward the driveway—gravely, as if starting this soulless mechanism were a doubtful, nay, even a dangerous operation. Next he manipulated a lever and toyed with some pedals, after which he waited—solemnly, apprehensively almost, for something to happen. Nothing did happen, whereat a puzzled look crept over his face. He thrust the lever forward, then back, then wabbled it experimentally, apparently considering what to do next, when . . . Whoosh! . . . The wagon started—with a clatter in every joint—but backward! It leaped backward so suddenly that George all but went over the dashboard.
Rearward in a dizzy circle spun the car, aiming carefully for a spot on the back wall of the factory and accelerating speed with every movement. The driver meanwhile was frantically pulling and hauling at levers and dancing on various pedals. With the wheels all but striking the brick wall they stopped—stopped as suddenly as they had started; and Mr. King, breathing quickly, perspiring profusely, turned, noted the distance of six inches between his precious vehicle and destruction for it, for his guest, and for himself; then sighed with relief and wiped his sleeve across a young but care-lined brow.
"You stopped her just in time," complimented George with an admiring glance at such a cool-headed driver.
Mr. King laughed mirthlessly. "I don't think I stopped her," he confessed, glancing down warily at his feet and carefully refraining from touching any part of the mechanism of control with his hands. "I—don't know why she stopped," he confessed. "I don't know why she shouldn't start again and take us through the wall at any moment."
After some reflection, as being very careful what he did, Mr. King bent over and opened a crude electric switch, whereat the engine ceased to fume and sputter, wheezed once, and passed slowly out of life.
"Guess there won't be any ride today, Bub," he said apologetically. "The gears aren't working right. I've got to take her insides out and tinker her some more."
"S'all right. I had a fine ride," assured George considerately, estimating with his eye the twenty feet the little wagon had darted crablike. "Say, Mr. King!" he announced with brightening countenance, "when I'm grown up, I'm going to build horseless wagons myself and make a lot of money selling 'em." Then the boyish face brightened still more, and the voice grew exceedingly eager. "Do—do you want to hire a boy right now—a boy that's getting to be a man pretty fast—and let him go to work to help you and learn how to build horseless wagons himself?"
There was such a simple earnestness about this request that it smothered the laugh in Charlie King's throat. "You?" he exclaimed, and took a reinventory of the lad's face, the broad forehead, the large, light-filled, brown eyes, the expression of wistful appeal.
"I—I've got to be pretty well off by the time I'm a man," confided George, "—for certain reasons," with a look and a tone as if two men should understand each other in some particulars without going too much into details.
"But—school, boy!" protested Mr. King, warningly. "You've got to be at school till you're grown up. You don't build horseless carriages with your hands, you know. You build them with your brains. You don't build a house or a locomotive or anything worth while first with your hands."
This was a devastating thought. George Judson considered doubtfully. He was in a hurry with life. Could he waste much more time on school?
"In your brains?" asked George, still mulling over the thought.
"Yes," said the inventor with laconic emphasis. "And then you build 'em on paper. Last of all you come here to a shop and build 'em of steel and wood." While he said this, Mr. King was unbuttoning those all-shrouding and greasespotted blue denims and peeling them off.
"It's too late to start work on the gears today," the inventor explained. "Besides, I'm tired and disappointed, and a little peeved at the old girl." He hung his overalls and cap on a peg and was taking down from sister pegs a coat and a derby hat.
"Would you like to see where I built this wagon first?" he inquired, contemplating George with a thoughtful air.
"Would I!" blurted George Judson.
"Come along; I'll show you," announced Mr. King cheerfully.
Outside the shop stood a team of handsome horses attached to a smart, un-covered buggy.
"Hop in!" commanded his new friend, and George did so.
After a spanking trot through the business district of the city the team swerved in and stopped on Woodward Avenue as at a familiar curb. George saw in front of him a largish house with largish grounds, and yet somehow very different from the Goat Girl's house with which he instantly compared it. This King house seemed older, and it and its surroundings were not "arranged." The yard was packed full of trees and shrubs and flower-beds and walks with a fountain and a little pool.
And when he got into the house it was just like the yard, stuffed full of every kind of beautiful and attractive thing. Two models of fullrigged ships met the boy's eye as he entered the hall, black and shiny hulls, white and gleaming canvas, new yellow ropes.
"I made 'em," boasted Mr. King proudly, enormously delighted with the subtle compliment of George's awed silence before them.
But besides ships that Mr. King had made, there were pictures in the house that he had painted—gorgeous, oily canvasses. George turned and looked the inventor all over again with an entirely new respect.
"Wisht I could see you paint one," murmured the boy, but even as he said it, his roving eye was lost in other wonders.
At length they came to a desk-like table with a raised slope to part of it. On this were draughting materials, pencils, erasers, rules, compasses, and strange, cloth-like paper, semitransparent—things the boy's fingers itched to get hold of at once.
"Here's where I borned her!" announced Mr. King with an exaggerated gesture and his most beaming smile.
"Gosh!" sighed the boy, and stood gazing. "Gosh! There—there's a lot more to it than I thought," he confided after a time—"to building horseless wagons."
Charlie King nodded approvingly. The ships, the pictures, the armor, the butterflies—nothing had knocked it out of the kid's head. He wanted to build horseless wagons, and he was yet a boy. But, at that, the horseless wagon was far younger than he. He was half-grown. The horseless wagon was just born.
"Tell you, George," suggested King confidentially and encouragingly. "The horseless wagon is yet in its infancy. There's got to be a whole lot of things found out about it yet. Men will have to tinker and tinker for some years yet before the horseless wagon comes into its own and begins to drive other kinds of locomotion off the highways, but it's coming. To bring it is a job for mechanics. Old heads—on young shoulders maybe—but old heads will make the horseless carriage practicable. In the meantime, you stick to school! Father prosperous?"
"Bricklayer, sir; but he's educated some, and he believes in education. He says he's going to keep us boys in school if it's the last thing he does."
"Wise father," approved Charlie King with one of his emphatic nods. "You get through high school at least—make college if you can. When you've done your best, come to me. I'll have the biggest horseless carriage factory in the world then—perhaps the only one—and there'll be a job in it for you."
"I take the job," said George seriously, as if it were right there before him now.
It was wonderful how assuring this prospect was to George Judson; how it appeared to offer the grand solution of all his problems and to provide a field of cloth of gold across which he could gallop straight into the perfect favor of his Velvet Queen. And besides this, there was something in Mr. King's manner, in his smile, to make any program seem attractive.
"I guess I've got to go home now," announced George. "Thank you a lot!" He offered in farewell a hand that had been sanctified by the touch of the Velvet Queen, but upon which was still some of the smell of Flannigan's goat and some of the grime of the cabbage patch. "I'll stick to school like you say, and I'll come back for that job. Be sure you hold it open for me."