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Updated: June 25, 2025
Suddenly a drunken navvy standing on a table in front of and to the left of Ingolby seized a horseshoe hanging on the wall, and flung it with an oath. It caught Ingolby in the forehead, and he fell to the floor without a sound. A minute afterwards the bar was empty, save for Osterhaut, Jowett, old Barbazon, and his assistants.
Osterhaut put the thing in a nutshell as he slithered up the main street of Lebanon on his way to the manning of the two fire-engines at the Lebanon fire-brigade station. "This thing is going to link up Lebanon and Manitou like a trace-chain," he declared with a chuckle. "Everything's come at the right minute.
The nigger barber, Berry, was one; another was the Jack-of-all-trades, Osterhaut, a kind of municipal odd-man, with the well-known red hair, the face that constantly needed shaving, the blue serge shirt with a scarf for a collar, the suit of canvas in the summer and of Irish frieze in the winter; the pair of hands which were always in his own pocket, never in any one else's; the grey eye, doglike in its mildness, and the long nose which gave him the name of Snorty.
"Jim, Rockwell, Osterhaut, Jowett, and my father!" she exclaimed. "Of course trouble wouldn't do anything but make them come closer round you. Poor people live so near to misfortune all the time I mean poor people like Jim, Osterhaut, and Jowett that changes of fortune are just natural things to them. As for my father, he has had to stretch out his hands so often to those in trouble "
For any casual work connected with public functions Osterhaut was indispensable, and he would serve as a doctor's assistant and help cut off a leg, be the majordomo for a Sunday-school picnic, or arrange a soiree at a meeting-house with equal impartiality. He had been known to attend a temperance meeting and a wake in the same evening.
Also the ubiquitous Osterhaut had not been idle, and his bulletin had just been handed to Jowett. "There's one thing ought to be done and has got to be done," Jowett added, "if the Monseenoor don't pull if off. The leaders have to be arrested, and it had better be done by one that, in a way, don't belong to either Lebanon or Manitou." The Mayor shook his head.
She had taken him in because, in years gone by, he had nursed her only son through an attack of smallpox on the Siwash River, and somehow Osterhaut had always paid his bills to her. He was curiously exact where she was concerned.
Then there's Rockwell, Osterhaut and Jowett, and there's your father. It was worth while living to feel the real thing." His hands went out as though grasping something good and comforting. "I don't suppose every man needs to be struck as hard as I've been to learn what's what, but I've learned it. I give you my word of honour, I've learned it." Her face flushed and her eyes kindled greatly.
Osterhaut and Jowett became silent, too, and, like the Indians, ran as fast as they could, over fences, through the trees, stumbling and occasionally cursing, but watching with fascinated eyes this adventuress of the North, taking chances which not one coureur-de-bois or river- driver in a thousand would take, with a five thousand-dollar prize as the lure. Why should she do it?
"Great Scott, look at her! She's goin' to try and take 'em!" exclaimed Osterhaut, the Jack-of-all-trades at Lebanon. "She ain't such a fool as all that. Why, no one ever done it alone. Low water, too, when every rock's got its chance at the canoe. But, my gracious, she is goin' to ride 'em!" Jowett, the horse-dealer, had a sportsman's joy in a daring thing. "See, old Injun Tekewani's after her!
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