ed Custer.
"That," said Mr. Shrimplin, looking into the round innocent face of his
son, "that's the stuff the traders used to sell the Indians. Strong?
Well, you might say it was middling strong--just middling--about three
drops of it would make a rabbit spit in a bulldog's face!"
It was on one memorable twenty-seventh of November that Mr. Shrimplin
reached this height of verbal felicity, and being Thanksgiving day, it
was, aside from the smell of strong yellow soap and the fresh-starched
white shirt, very like a Sunday.
He and Custer sat before the kitchen stove and in the intervals of his
narrative listened to the wind rise without, and watched the sparse
flakes of fine snow that it brought coldly out of the north, where
the cloud banks lay leaden and chill on the far horizon.
[Illustration: "I started to tell you how I put Murphy out of
business."]
Mr. Shrimplin had risen early that day, or, as he told Custer, he had
"got up soon", and long before his son had left his warm bed in the
small room over the kitchen, was well on his rounds in his high
two-wheeled cart, with the rack under the seat which held the great cans
of gasolene from which the lamps were filled. He had only paused at Maxy
Schaffer's Railroad Hotel to partake of what he called a Kentucky
breakfast--a drink of whisky and a chew of tobacco--a simple dietary
protection against the evils of an empty stomach, to which he
particularly drew Custer's attention.
His father's occupation was entirely satisfactory to Custer. Being
employed by the town gave him an official standing, perhaps not so
distinguished as that of a policeman, but still eminently worth while;
and Mr. Shrimplin added not a little to the sense of its importance by
dilating on the intrigues of ambitious rivals who desired to wrest his
contract from him; and he impressed Custer, who frequently accompanied
him on his rounds, with the wisdom of keeping the lamps that shone upon
the homes of members of the town council in especially good order.