Part 2 (1/2)
”How's that?”
”Right up to the golden gates this time, sure. It's straight goods. St.
Peter ain't going to take no post-prandial siestas from now on. I'm timbering my shots to keep from breaking the sky. Tell you what, I'm jarring them mansions in heaven wuss'n a New York subway contractor them Fifth Avenue palaces.” Zephyr paused and glanced languidly at the superintendent.
Firmstone chuckled.
”Go on,” he said.
”I've gone as far as I can without flying. It's a lead from the golden streets of the New Jerusalem. Followed it up to the foot of Bingham Pa.s.s; caught it above the slide, then it took up the cliff, and disappeared in the cerulean. Say, Goggles, how are you off for chuck?
I've been up against glory, and I'm down hungrier than a she-bear that's skipped summer and hibernated two winters.”
”Good! Guess Bennie will fix us up something. Can you wait a few minutes?”
”I think I can. I've been practising on that for years. No telling when such things will come in handy. You don't object to music, Goggles?”
”Not to music, no,” Firmstone answered, with an amused glance at Zephyr.
Zephyr, unruffled, drew from his s.h.i.+rt a well-worn harmonica.
”Music hath charms,” he remarked, brus.h.i.+ng the instrument on the sleeve of his s.h.i.+rt. ”Referring to my savage breast, not yours.”
He placed the harmonica to his lips, holding it in hollowed hands. His oscillating breath jarred from the metal reeds the doleful strains of _Home, Sweet Home_, m.u.f.fled by the hollow of his hands into mournful cadences.
At last Firmstone closed his desk.
”If your breast is sufficiently soothed, let's see what Bennie can do for your stomach.”
As they pa.s.sed from the office Zephyr carefully replaced the harmonica in his s.h.i.+rt.
”I'd rather be the author of that touching little song than the owner of the Inferno. That's my new claim,” he remarked, distantly.
Firmstone laughed.
”I thought your claim was nearer heaven.”
”The two are not far apart. 'Death, like a narrow sea, divides.' But my reminiscences were getting historical, which you failed to remark. I ain't no Wolfe and Pierre ain't no Montcalm, nor the Heights of Abraham ain't the Blue Goose. Pierre's a hog. At least, he's a close second. A hog eats snakes and likewise frogs. Pierre's only got as far as frogs, last I heard. Pierre's bad. Morrison's bad. Luna ain't. He thinks he is; but he ain't. I'm not posting you nor nothing. I'm only meditating out loud. That's all.”
They entered the mill boarding-house. Bennie, the cook, greeted Zephyr effusively.
”Goggles invited me to pay my respects to you,” Zephyr remarked. ”I'm empty, and I'm thinking you can satisfy my longing as nothing else can do.”
Zephyr addressed himself to Bennie's viands. At last he rose from the table.
”To eat and to sleep are the chief ends of man. I have eaten, and now I see I am tired. With your consent, uttered or unexpressed, I'll wrap the drapery of my bunk around me and take a snooze. And say, Goggles,” he added, ”if, the next time you inventory stock, you are shy a sack of flour and a side of bacon, you can remark to the company that prospectors is thick around here, and that prospectors is p.r.o.ne to evil as the sparks fly upward. That's where the flour and bacon are going. Up to where St. Peter can smell them cooking; leastways he can if he hangs his nose over the wall and the wind's right.”
CHAPTER III
_elise_