Main-Travelled Roads [87]
"Good afternoon," said the stranger pleasantly.
"Good afternoon, sir."
"Bugs purty plenty?"
"Plenty enough, I gol! I don't see where they all come fum."
"Early Rose?" inquired the man, as if referring to the bugs.
"No; Peachblows an' Carter Reds. My Early Rose is over near the house. The old woman wants 'em near. See the darned things!" he pursued, rapping savagely on the edge of the pan to rattle the bugs back.
"How do yeh kill 'em-scald 'em?"
"Mostly. Sornetimcs I
"Good piece of oats," yawned the stranger listessly.
"That's barley."
"So 'tis. Didn't notice."
Uncle Ethan was wondering who the man was. He had some pots of black paint in the wagon and two or three square boxes.
"What do yeh think o' Cleveland's chances for a second term?" continued the man, as if they had been talking politics all the while.
Uncle Ripley scratched his head. "Waal-I dunn~ bein' a Republican-I think-"
"That's so-it's a purty scaly outlook. I don't believe in second terms myself," the man hastened to say.
"Is that your new barn acrosst there?" be asked, point-ing with his whip.
"Yes, sir, it is," replied the old man proudly. After years of planning and hard work he had managed to erect a little wooden barn, costing possibly three hundred dollars. It was plain to be seen he took a childish pride in the fact of its newness.
The stranger mused. "A lovely place for a sign," he said as his eyes wandered across its shining yellow broadside.
Uncle Ethan stared, unmindful of the bugs crawling over the edge of his pan. His interest in the pots of paint deepened.
"Couldn't think o' lettin' me paint a sign on that barn?" the stranger continued, putting his locked hands around one knee and gaining away across the pigpen at the building.
"What kind of a sign? Goldarn your skins!" Uncle Ethan pounded the pan with his paddle and scraped two or three crawling abominations off his leathery wrist.
It was a beautiful day, and the man in the wagon seemed unusually loath to attend to business. The tired ponies slept in the shade of the lombardies. The plain was draped in a warm mist and shadowed by vast, vaguely defined masses of clouds-a lazy June day.
"Dodd's Family Bitters," said the man, waking out of his abstraction with a start and resuming his working manner. "The best bitter in the market." He alluded to it in the singular. "Like to look at it? No trouble to show goods, as the fellah says," he went on hastily, seeing Uncle Ethan's hesitation.
He produced a large bottle of triangular shape, like a bottle for pickled onions. It had a red seal on top and a strenuous caution in red letters on the neck, "None genuine unless 'Dodd's Family Bittem' is blown in the bottom."
"Here's what it cures," pursued the agent, pointing at the side, where; in an inverted pyramid, the names of several hundred diseases were arranged, running from "gout" to "pulmonary complaints," etc.
"I gol! She cuts a wide swath, don't she?" exclaimed Uncle Ethan, profoundly impressed with the list.
"They ain't no better bitter in the world," said the agent with a conclusive inflection.
"What's its speshy-ality? Most of 'em have some speshy-ality."
"Well-summer complaints-an'-an'-spring an' fall troubles-tones ye up, sort of."
Uncle Ethan's forgotten pan was empty of his gathered bugs. He was deeply interested in this man. There was something he liked about him.
"What does it sell fur?" he asked after a pause.
"Same price as them cheap medicines-dollar a bottle-big bottles, too. Want one?"
"Wal, mother ain't to home, an' I don't know as she'd like this kind. We ain't been sick fr years. Still, they's no tellln'," he added, seeing the answer to his objection in the agent's eyes. "Times is purty close too, with us, y' see;; we've just built that stable-"
'Say I'll tell yeh what I'll do," said the stranger, waking up and speaking in a warnily generous tone. "I'll give you ten bottles of the bitter if you'll let me paint a sign on that barn. It won't hurt the barn a bit, and if you want 'o you