HER way seemed hesitant and apologetic, for all the brave dash she had made from the door of the Racket Store. The flash that burned in her face was not all due to the scorching heat that beat up, intensified by the reflection, from McPacken's dust-white street as she stood an indecisive moment a little distance from Mrs. Cowgill and Banjo Gibson, seated in comfort on the green bench beside the hotel door.
"Was you wantin' to see somebody?" Mrs. Cowgill inquired, turning casually, feigning a business interest that she did not feel, suppressing a greater one that she would not confess.
"I'm taking subscriptions for a work—a book—this book," the girl said, appealing from face to face with her serious, unsophisticated, wide-open brown eyes. "May I sit here a little while and tell you—show it to you?"
Mrs. Cowgill moved along a little, although there was ample room at her end of the bench, signifying by the shift that the stranger was to sit beside her, and not by the side of Banjo Gibson. Banjo found it necessary, for decorum and comfort, to edge along a little way himself, putting a space of half a yard between himself and the hostess of the Cottonwood Hotel. It was not quite far enough to give him a view beyond her; he shifted a yard more, pretending that his shoestring needed tightening, turning up his eyes in sly measurement of the girl's obvious good points as he leaned.
Banjo was confirmed in his first opinion by this adroit exploration. She was not only a peach, but any kind and all kinds of fruit which was lucious, colorful, sweet. To look at her was refreshment; to be near her a placid joy.
Banjo did not hold it against her that she stood at least a hand's breadth taller than himself, being accustomed by this time to the handicap that nature had placed upon him, thankful for it sometimes when there was fighting and working, and other hardships incidental to the estate of a proper man, to be met. He glowed with admiration as he noted her youthful freshness and the refinement of her face, like a costly fiddle beside a cheap one, he thought, compared to the wind-rough faces of those railroad and cow-ranch girls.
It would take black haws on the bush after the first frost to match her hair. A little hollow along the jaw, maybe; just a trifle too hollow there. But she would fill out with proper feeding. Her hands were strong and flexible, appealing hands to a musician. Music spoke out of them; Banjo could feel it as he could feel it in instruments viewed through a window. It would take apothecary's scales to weigh her when she walked.
So Banjo summed her up, slewed in respectful attention on the bench to look across Mrs. Cowgill. The girl was holding a dumpy thick book with red cover and black lettering clasped in both hands, in a supplicating way of innocence that carried an appeal to Banjo Gibson's heart. That Mrs. Cowgill was neither so friendly nor sympathetic was evident in the aloof suspicion of her bearing.
"It's called A Thousand Ways To Make Money," the girl said, looking that appealing way of hers from face to face, like some poor creature, Banjo thought—he would not insult her by saying a dog—running from door to door of a house on a winter night when everybody was too snug in bed and too selfish in their comfort to get up and let it in.
Mrs. Cowgill took the book from her. She held it in her hand unopened, gazing at it steadily and silently Presently she turned to the agent, who smiled in timid expectancy.
"Was you in there tryin' to sell Jake Smolinsky one of them books?" Mrs. Cowgill demanded, rather than inquired.
"If you mean that little old man that makes a noise like a clock going to strike, I was," the agent confessed, the smile going from her lips, a sort of comical solemnity taking its place.
"Well, child, a thousand ways to make money wouldn't be more than half as many as Jake Smolinsky knows already,' Mrs. Cowgill said, softening in her judgment, as Banjo was glad to see.
The lady agent sighed.
"It looks like the rest of the people in this town are just about as smart as he is," she said.
"You didn't sell a book all the time you've been runnin' around in this broilin' sun?"
"Not a one," the agent replied, but brave in her failure, Banjo could see; no tears within a mile of her.
"I suppose anybody ought to be glad to know a thousand ways to make money," Mrs. Cowgill reflected. "How much does it cost?"
"Only two dollars. And immediate delivery,"—hopefully—"no wait."
"Two dollars for a thousand ways to make money!" Banjo marvelled over the bargain. "And I'd nearly give my l— my ankle, for one sure-shootin' way."
"If you'd like one of the books, sir," the lady agent said, leaning to look at him in her innocence, her great, her pure, unsmirched, unworldly innocence, and no pretense about it, Banjo knew too well.
"Well, hum-m-m-m! Two dollars, hum-m-m-m!" Banjo turned it off with his noncommittal rumble and let it rest. Two hard dollars in the jeans were better, maybe; more certain, without a doubt, than a thousand theories for making more in a little red book with black letters on the back. For, if they were legal ways, they were ways involving work, a condition for obtaining money to which Banjo Gibson was unalterably opposed.
"Now, what's in that book worth two dollars to anybody?" Mrs. Cowgill wanted to know. She put the question pedantically, in the manner of a teacher who had the culprit right before her, and would have no evasion nor squirming out of it in the least.
The lady agent took the book and turned its pages, telling them what it was good for as she went along.
The book told how to make cider vinegar out of the cobs of green corn, horseradish out of turnips, tomato catsup from pumpkins, sofas out of salt barrels, bedsteads out of goods boxes; it told how to make honey out of corn silk, olive oil out of hickory nuts, neckties out of yarn, sofa pillows out of gunnysacks. It told how to preserve eggs in times of plenty, store them for a few years and sell them at a profit of six cents a dozen; it made plain the formulae of patent medicines, which anybody could make for three cents a bottle and sell for a dollar; it exposed the tricks of the grocery business, and gave a full working order for the practice of spiritualism and legerdemain. It told how to make valuable things from trash, giving tables of cost and return, showing what immense profits lay waiting the smart citizen in the very neighborhood at his hand. The man who owned the book had his hand in the world's pocket.
All of that, and a great deal more, the young lady agent recited, not very spiritedly, to be sure; not with the certainty of confidence.
"Now, look here," said Mrs. Cowgill argumentatively; "it wouldn't put a person ahead any to make up all that bogus stuff, and maybe kill himself takin' the medicine and usin' the vinegar and preserved eggs. A person don't use enough of them things to make it profitable."
"You're not supposed to use them yourself; you manufacture and sell them."
"I'm thinkin' about that, too," Mrs. Cowgill said. "You say it's a book that ought to be in every home."
"Every home. There comes an opportunity in every life for making money. The secret of success is in being prepared when it comes. All the masters of finance realize this. They never would have been rich if they had not been ready. Every—"
"But suppose you did sell one to every house in McPacken; suppose everybody went to work manufacturin' and bottlin', and preservin' eggs and puttin' down butter, expectin' to sell their humbug stuff to the neighbors. Don't you think the business would be a little bit overdone?"
The lady agent bent her head, thinking it over. In a little while she looked up, grinning whimsically, as if it hurt somewhere, but she was not going to let anybody see the spot if it cost her life.
"I guess the man that wrote the book never thought of that; I'm sure I never did," she confessed.
"Did you ever sell any of them books anywhere?"
"Yes, I've sold a good many—about fifty-three, I think. I've got a good many left, though—over at the depot in my trunk."
"Where did you start from, child?"
"Hutchinson."
"How long ago?"
"About two months."
"And you've only sold fifty-three, clearin' maybe a dollar on a book?"
The lady agent nodded assent, slowly, her action detached from her thought, it seemed, judging by her eyes, which were fixed on some point beyond Orrin Smith and his gang of jerries; far, far beyond, indeed.
"It takes you a long time to find out you ain't got even one way to make money," Mrs. Cowgill said, but rather more in admiration than pity or reproof.
"I've never been whipped, I never will be!" the lady agent declared, very resolutely, very calmly, with steady voice.
"Some people's that way," Mrs. Cowgill said, nodding her head as if she understood the trait very well. "I wish somebody—where are you headin' for from here?"
"I'm heading in here, as the railroad men say, I guess. If I can't sell any books, I'll have to stay."
"Ever teach school?"
"No, but I could. Is there an opening here?"
"I don't know. I don't suppose they've hired the teachers yet, it's nearly two months before school opens. I just wondered, you look so young for a travellin' book agent I thought you might be a teacher workin' through vacation. How did you come to take up sellin' books?"
"I guess I was talked into it. I bought the western half of Kansas for a hundred dollars."
"You paid too much, even if you got a deed," said Banjo, feelingly.
"I believe you," the lady agent agreed, leaning over in her attentive way to look at him fairly as she spoke.
"Just for the right to sell them books out here?" Mrs. Cowgill asked.
"That's the scheme. I paid another hundred dollars for a hundred books, put them in my trunk and started out."
"Where from, honey?"
Banjo was pleased to see Mrs. Cowgill softening more and more. How that girl could go tramping around Kansas with books to sell, or anything to sell, and not run out of stock in a week, was a mystery to him.
"I started from Kansas City."
"What was you doin' there before you bought in on that fool book?"
"I suppose I might as well tell you," said the girl, turning frankly to Mrs. Cowgill. "A person can't be a mystery in a little town, especially when she's got to find a job. I wasn't doing anything before dad went broke in the real estate boom. Then I sold some of my rings and ear-bobs and trinkets to raise the money I blew on the books. And that's all there is to tell, except my name."
Mrs. Cowgill waited, perking up a little with expectancy, to receive it.
"Louise Gardner," the girl introduced herself. "Maybe that's it, and maybe it isn't."
"That ain't nobody's business but your own," Mrs. Cowgill granted, with easy indifference, as if accustomed to such things right along.
"That's right!" Banjo declared with strong emphasis. He seemed ready to stand in defense of her name, true or false, against all aspersion and doubt.
"You never waited table," Mrs. Cowgill said. She spoke with something like regretful disparagement, as if the young woman had neglected a duty, or an opportunity at least, for which there was no remedy now.
"I could do it. Is there a job here? Do you want a girl?"
"I can only afford to pay five dollars a week, room with my daughter—she's about your age. It may not look like much, but it beats trampin' around in the hot sun."
"Not anything like it," said Louise Gardner.
"I'll not say it ain't heavy and hard while it lasts, but the rush don't last long."
"That will be all right," Louise said, cheerfully.
Banjo looked at her queerly. What did she mean? Was she going to take that job?
"There's time for a girl to do her washin' and sewin' in the afternoon," Mrs. Cowgill seemed to argue for the place that she had to be filled, just as if the candidate held back instead of sitting keen and hopeful, a new light bright in her eyes.
"That will be fine!" Louise declared. "I'm ready to begin right now."
Banjo Gibson sat looking this way and that, his mouth open, his eyes staring, as if amazed by some extraordinary creature that had appeared on the hotel porch and vanished with the next breath in a puff of smoke. He seemed to be making a mute appeal to somebody to confirm him in this amazing event as the lady agent followed Mrs. Cowgill into the hotel.
What did she mean? Banjo marvelled. Was she going to take that hash-slinger job? A girl like that? with a build like that? and a face like that? What could she know about slinging hash in a railroad boarding house? What would happen if Bill Connor tried to pinch her leg?