They ruminated on him as he passed, speculating in a perfectly
audible way upon his business.
"Looks like a drummer."
"No, he ain't no drummer. See them Boston glasses?"
"That's so. Guess he's a teacher."
"Looks like a moneyed cuss."
"Bos'n, I guess."
He knew the one who spoke last-Freeme Cole, a man who was the
fighting wonder of Howard's boyhood, now degenerated into a
stoop-shouldered, faded, garrulous, and quarrelsome old man. Yet
there was something epic in the old man's stories, something
enthralling in the dramatic power of recital.
Over by the blacksmith shop the usual game of quaits" was in
progress, and the drug clerk on the corner was chasing a crony
with the squirt pump, with which he was about to wash the
windows. A few teams stood ankle-deep in the mud, tied to the
fantastically gnawed pine pillars of the wooden awnings. A man
on a load of hay was "jawing" with the attendant of the platform
scales, who stood below, pad and pencil in hand.
"Hit 'im! hit 'im! Jump off and knock 'im!" suggested a bystander,
jovially.
Howard knew the voice.
"Talk's cheap. Takes money t' buy whiskey," he said when the man
on the load repeated his threat of getting off and whipping the
scalesman.
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