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You would a-been, only for my havin' an orig'nal system for peddlin' them letters that's all my own. It's system does it but it ain't right, just the same. The Gov'mint don't expect nobody to work more'n eight hours to a stretch, and look at me, two hours late and I ain't home yet!
"Teck Pervis yo may mark my words, but jes es soon es them broken down ristocrats git er hol of ther gov'mint, jes es soon es yo po fools help them, then yer kin go." Teck Pervis glared at his wife like a fierce beast at bay. He was Teck Pervis of old, the defiant, blood-thirsty rebel in the rifle pit glaring over the breastworks at the enemy.
It's not much, but it's something if she should need anything while I'm gone. I thought you might see that she was all right till I got back?" The servant of the "Gov'mint" stood and stared down at the limp little roll of bills in his hand; he stared until something caught in his throat and made him gulp again noisily.
"I warn you, Mister Shepard," he had shrilled, "that it's a state's prison offense to interfere with a Gov'mint official in the performance of his duty and if you've got any complaints to make they'll have to be set down reg'lar in writin', so's I can give 'em due consideration!"
They had been waiting for him the regulars. They had been waiting for him longer than Old Jerry knew. In the chair that had been the throne-seat of the town's great man the servant of the Gov'mint sat and faced his loyal circle. He had reached his climax had hammered it home. Now he was rounding out his conclusion for those who hung, hungry-eyed, upon his eloquence.
I couldn't gather it all in, ye see. I was up on a ladder peeking in through a long hole laid down sideways. But that's the main f'ature av the rumpus. They're countin' big on the Osages becase the Gov'mint trusts 'em to do scout duty down beyont Humboldt, and Jean says the Osages is sure to join 'em. Said it is whispered round at the Mission now. And phwat's to be nixt?"
He he laced out and caught me and that's where I landed, there against the wall." The servant of the "Gov'mint" nodded his comprehension he nodded it volubly, with deep bows that would have done credit to a dancing master, lest his comprehensions seem in the least bit veiled with doubt. He even clicked his tongue sympathetically, just as the plump newspaper man had done.
It was Old Jerry's hour the one hour of the day in which his starved appetite for notoriety ever supped of nourishment that moment when the small knot of loiterers upon the sidewalk, always, face for face, composed of the same personnel as the unvarying nightly circle about the Tavern stove, gave way before him and the authority of the "Gov'mint" which he personified.
Old Jerry's mail route suffered that week; his original "system" of mail distribution, of which he had always been so jealously proud, went from bad to very, very bad, and from that to an impossible worse; and yet, while it became a veritable lottery for the hillsfolk who were dependent upon him whether they would receive the packet of mail which really belonged to a two-mile distant neighbor or none at all, in one respect the rural service improved immensely, and the improvement and strangely enough, too was as directly a result of that stubborn image of John Anderson's bowed head which persisted in haunting the mind of the servant of the Gov'mint as was the alarming growth of his lack of dependability.
Instead he sat gazing at him, wide-mouthed, and after Old Jerry had borne the scrutiny as long as he could he took the initiative himself. "Well, I got here," he quavered. "I been a-tryin' to get upstairs to see you ever since about three o'clock, and they wouldn't let me in. Said you was too busy to be bothered, even when I told 'em I belonged to the Gov'mint service.
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