Top-Notch Magazine/Volume 22/Number 2/The Fluctuating Package/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I.
BOOTS FOR BARTON.
A LARGE consignment of shoes had just been delivered at "The Emporium," as Long & McKenzie's general store in Burt City, Montana, was usually known, and Amos Long, the fat little senior partner, was standing in the doorway, watching one of his assistants unpacking the case of goods.
As the boxes were carried into the store, one of them, considerably larger than the usual shoe box, dropped to the ground, and out fell a pair of heavy-soled tan bluchers with eighteen-inch tops. That they were a special order was certain.
Long picked up the shoes, and was admiring them when Arlo McKenzie, the other member of the firm, came to the door. It was only recently that McKenzie had bought a share in the business, and Long began explaining to him about these particular bluchers.
"They're for Tom Barton, at Dry Wash," he said. "For the last six years, regular, Barton has sent to The Emporium for a pair of them oak-sole, laced-knee contraptions. Funny how a man's got to have the same thing right along when he once gets stuck on it. Barton's got a ranch down here in charge of a foreman named Hoover, but he stays mostly up at Dry Wash himself. Him and his men are good customers of ours, Arlo, and we got to treat him white. Say, Jerry!" and Long turned to his assistant, "Put them tan bluchers in a box, wrap 'em secure, and send 'em by express prepaid to Barton, same's usual."
"Maybe I'd better do that," said McKenzie. "Things are sort of quiet in the store, and I can just as well attend to that as not."
McKenzie was a tall, meager-framed man, middle-aged, and looking at least ten years older than he really was. During the last week, Long had noticed that he seemed absent-minded; that his eyes had grown dull and his face haggard, just as though something was worrying him. This bothered Long a good deal, for his heart was kindly and he did not want to see his partner get under the weather and perhaps take to his bed.
"All right, Mac, maybe you'd better," said Long. "And that reminds me of another thing. Business is quiet, and if you'd like to go away for a couple o' weeks with Lois—fishing or something else—I guess The Emporium won't suffer. You're lookin' kind o' peaked the last few days. Go off somers and have a good time. Why not?"
McKenzie flashed a quick glance at his partner. "I'm all right, Amos," he answered, and he laughed lightly as he took the boots from Jerry. But it was a forced laugh, and Long knew McKenzie was far from being all right. However, he did not press the matter further.
McKenzie went into the storeroom with the boots. Perhaps half an hour later he emerged with a package under his arm, and started for the express office. "Don't forget to send 'em prepaid," Long called after him, "and by express. Barton never uses parcel post much."
"I get you," answered McKenzie.
At the express office, Al Reeves, the driver, had just got back with a load of stuff from the station. He took the package handed over by McKenzie, looked at the address, and turned to the scales.
"Where's Summerfield, Al?" inquired McKenzie.
Summerfield was the express agent, and, for very good reasons which will appear later, an excellent friend of McKenzie's. Reeves was a freckle-faced, red-headed youngster, and he grinned widely as he answered: "He just saw some one go by, Mr. McKenzie, and went out to walk down the street with her a ways."
"Ah!" McKenzie murmured, and a glow came into his dark eyes. The sparkle vanished suddenly, and an expression of sorrow flashed into the thin face.
"This hugs six pounds mighty close," observed Reeves, "and if you want to prepay, it will cost you two bits."
"I want it to go prepaid," said McKenzie. "What's the method when you send a package prepaid, Al?" he inquired, exhibiting a sudden interest in the driver's work.
"Give you a receipt first," was the answer, and the driver proceeded to write one out with an indelible pencil, "Next," he went on, after exchanging the receipt for a quarter, which he dropped into the till, "I put on this yellow prepaid slip."
A pad of the slips lay on the counter, and he picked one off, drew it across a wet sponge, and slapped it on the parcel. "What's the value, Mr. McKenzie?" inquired Reeves.
"Not enough to mention," said the other. "It's way below fifty dollars, and the receipt calls for a valuation up to that amount in case the package is lost, doesn't it?"
"Right-o! Le'me have the receipt a minute."
He picked up a rubber stamp, pressed it upon an ink pad, and then brought it down hard on the piece of paper McKenzie had laid on the counter. "'Value asked and not given,'" he remarked. "Notice? Now I'll just mark the prepaid slip with the weight and the amount you paid." He suited his action to the word, marking a plain "6" in the space for the weight, and "25" in that for the amount. "There you have it," he finished. "Nothin' very complicated about that, huh?"
"Is that all there is to it?" queried McKenize.
"Well," answered Reeves, "Joe Summerfield makes out the waybill."
"Is that complicated?"
"Easy as fallin' off a log. Say," said the driver obligingly, "I'll make out the waybill for this, just to help Joe out and show you how it's done."
He went back to a counter in the rear of the office, and returned with several yellow slips, probably two feet long and three and one-half inches wide.
"These are printed at both ends, see?" he continued. "In the middle there's a blank space. I fold the two printed ends over with a piece of carbon underneath. Timesavers, that's what. Here's the date—that goes on with a stamp." He used another stamp and the ink pad. "Then here's a stamp with 'Burt City, Montana' on it, and our block number. I use that, too. Now I fill in."
While Reeves was writing, McKenzie examined the last rubber stamp. "The two printed ends are torn off," the driver continued, "thusly." He wrenched the slip into three pieces. "This"—and he held up one printed end—"is pasted on the package." Picking up a brush, he pushed it into the dextrin can and smeared the back of the bit of paper and smoothed it down on the package. "The middle piece we keep," he added, "and the other end goes with the—bunch of waybills I hand to the messenger on the train. That's the whole of it, Mr. McKenzie."
The junior partner examined the package carefully, then laughed as he turned away. "Simple enough when you know how, Al," he remarked. "Much obliged for your trouble." He then went out of the office.
Reeves took the package and laid it on the floor by the stove with a number of other outgoing parcels. After that he went on unloading his wagon and making ready for his afternoon delivery.
"I ought to've told McKenzie," muttered Reeves, "that his package got in too late for Seventeen, and will have to lay over until to-morrow at eleven. But I reckon it don't make much difference. The package will be in Dry Wash to-morrow afternoon. Long & McKenzie are mighty good about givin' us stuff they could send by parcel post. Our business ain't fell off much with that firm."
Joe Summerfield came in presently with a smile you could have seen a block away, and walked into his cage. He was busy getting his office in shape for the traveling agent. This gentleman was supposed to drop in every three months, but he had a way of showing up at any old time.
"How's Lois, Joe?"
Summerfield looked up to see the grinning, impish face of the driver pressed against the cage wires. "Oh, you go chase yourself!" he laughed, and threw a paper weight.
About three o'clock that afternoon, while Summerfield was alone in the office and busy at his desk, he heard a sound behind him, and turned in his swivel chair. The next moment he was on his feet, his face beaming. "Hello, Lois!" he cried. "Say, come in and sit down, can't you?"
A young woman had walked in behind the counter; a very pretty young woman she was, too, but her fair face wore rather a serious expression at that moment.
"I can only stop a second, Joe," she answered, "so I'll not come in and sit down. I want to ask you if"
"You're not going away?" broke in Summerfield, noting a satchel in the girl's hand.
"Oh, no!" she said, and smiled. "I was just taking this to- the store for father. Do you know any one named Lewis Ruthven?"
"Do I?" said the express agent, coming out of his private quarters. "Well, I should say so! He's from the East, Lois, and a mighty fine chap. He's out on a ranch near here J—Barton's ranch, the one Hoover has charge of. Why? Are you acquainted with him?"
"No," she returned, "I never saw Mr. Ruthven. But I have a letter—it came only a little while ago—from my friend, Gwendolyn Arnold, of Albany, New York. She knows Mr. Ruthven, and she writes that she has asked him to call and see father and me."
"Your father must know him, Lois. Ruthven is in town quite often, and all the ranch trading is done at The Emporium."
"Then I'll ask father about him," she said, as she went through the gate at the end of the counter. "Going to work to-night, Joe?"
"I think so."
"Will I bother you if I drop in for a little while?"
"Will you bother me?" he scoffed. "Well, I should say not! But why the hurry?"
"I must be going on," she said, with some constraint. "If Mr. Ruthven calls, I wish you could come with him, Joe."
"Maybe I can fix it, Lois; we'll see." And he walked with her to the door and watched her fondly as she moved off down the street. "Regular princess, that's what she is," he said to himself, as he returned to his work. "Never was another girl like her, and never will be. Wonder if it costs any more to keep an establishment of your own than to go on barely existing at a boarding house. I—well, it takes two to make a bargain. Wish this Gwendolyn Arnold had kept still about Ruthven. If a girl had to make a choice between him and me" He did not finish that line of thought, but broke off with a frown.
Half an hour later, he began looking over the packages by the stove. When he picked up the package for Thomas Barton, he remembered Ruthven and gave the package some attention.
"Al must have taken this in," he said to himself. "He's got it marked for six pounds, and I'll eat my hat if he hasn't made a mistake." He weighed the parcel in his hands. "Sure he has!" he declared, and took it over to the package scales. It tipped the beam at just eight pounds. "One on Al," he said, grinning. "It won't go out until to-morrow, and I'll just put it in the storeroom and have some fun with that little runt."
Two hours later, Reeves came in to load the stuff for No. 8, eastbound. Summerfield immediately went for him. "You've got an education, Al?" Summerfield inquired.
"So-so," said the driver, a bit surprised. "I can figger rings all around you, although I ain't so cocky about it."
"See things straight, do you? Haven't got the blind staggers, or anything like that
"Not so'st you can notice it, you big windjammer! What's pestering your mind, huh? That's something I'll be hanged if I can see through. You must have taken a funny powder."
"Go out and buy me a cigar," ordered Summerfield; "a fat perfecto. Geigel has 'em, two for a quarter."
"Who says the cigars are on me?"
"I do. You took in a package for Barton, at Dry Wash, didn't you?"
"Yep. If you'd been attendin' to business instead of paradin' around with a skirt, I wouldn't have had to take it in."
"You marked that package six pounds."
"That's what it weighs in at. I remember it. Collected two bits from your father-in-law elect, Arlo McKenzie. Why?"
"It weighs eight pounds, son. Go into the storeroom and get it and see for yourself."
Reeves looked startled. Then he rushed for the storeroom and got the Barton package from a shelf by the window. Summerfield leaned against the counter with a complacent smile while Al laid the package on the scales. "Say, Joe," the driver whooped, "what you givin' me?"
"Eight pounds, eh?" queried Summerfield.
"No, six. Come and look."
The smile vanished from Summerfield's face, and his complacency disappeared. He went hurriedly to the scales, looked, rubbed his eyes, and looked again. The beam tilted at not quite six pounds. Next he looked at the package, blew the dust off the scales, and weighed the shipment very carefully for himself. He peered at the hilarious Reeves in astonishment.
"I weighed that package an hour or two ago," he declared, "and it weighed eight pounds!"
"Yes, you did!" cried Reeves. "Trouble with you is, Joe, Lois McKenzie has got you buffaloed. You don't know whether you're afoot or horseback, right side up or standin' on your head. Who buys from Geigel, huh? Who"
The door opened, and some one walked in. A cheery voice called: "Howdy, Summerfield!"