Chapter I: The Orham Stage

“Was you cal’latin’ to buy one of them turnovers, bub?” casually inquired Mr. Clark, ceasing to gaze at his steaming boots, which were planted against the bulging centre of the station stove, and turning toward the boy at the lunch counter.

“Yes, sir,” said the boy. He had taken off one worsted mitten and held a five-cent piece clutched tightly in his red fist.

“I want to know!” exclaimed Mr. Clark, and then, bending forward, as much as his girth would allow, to wink ’round the corner of the stove at Mr. Bodkin, who sat opposite, he added: “Ain’t your ma ever learned you to respect age?”

The boy made no reply to this question, but Mr. Bodkin slapped his thigh and remarked that that was “a good one.”

“Them turnovers,” continued Mr. Clark, “was willed to this depot by the man that used to drive the Ostable bake-cart. He’s dead now, and here you be, figgerin’ to eat up his gravestone. Dear, dear! I don’t know what this country’s comin’ to. Ike, gimme a match.”

Mr. Bodkin, after his laugh was over, produced a “card” of matches and passed them to the humorist, who used one to relight the stump of his cigar and put the remainder in his pocket. Then he returned to his subject.

“Them turnovers----” he began, but was interrupted by the station agent, who came out of the little room where the telegraph instrument was clicking, and stepped behind the lunch counter. He looked at the joker and his companion in anything but a friendly manner.

“Those turnovers,” said the station agent, “were fresh yesterday and they’re good for somethin’, which is more than I can say about some other fresh things around this depot jest now. Lon Clark, I’d like to remind you that we use blackin’ on that stove, not terbacker juice. Well, boy, what’ll you have?”

The boy, thus appealed to, held up his five-cent piece and said that he should like one of the slandered “turnovers.”

“All right; which’ll it be--mince or apple?”

“If I was you,” suggested Mr. Clark, not yet completely crushed, “I’d take the mince kind. You know what you’ll git if you take apple, but baker’s mincemeat’s kind of a myst’ry. Might bite into a gold dollar, like as not; hey, Ike?”

“Give me an apple one,” said the boy, decidedly.

The station agent wrapped the pastry in a piece of newspaper and handed it to his customer. Then he came out from behind the counter and, looking at Mr. Clark and his friend, sniffed suspiciously.

“Either of you fellers got your boots afire?” he asked, after a moment. “Seems to me I smell somethin’ mean, like leather burnin’. Oh, excuse me, Lon; I didn’t notice your cigar.” And, having unloaded this bit of sarcasm, he returned to the telegraph instrument.

The boy, a youngster of about twelve years of age, with a freckled face and a pair of bright gray eyes, took his “turnover” to the settee in the corner of the waiting-room and began to eat. He had on a worn cloth cap with an attachment that could be pulled down to cover the ears, and a shabby overcoat of man’s size, very much too large for him. As he munched the greasy crust and the thin layer of “evaporated” apple, he looked around him with interest.

The station itself was like the average railway building on Cape Cod. Except for the sign “Harniss” that hung outside, it might have been the station at Wellmouth, which he had seen so often. Battered settees around the walls; lithographs of steamers, time-tables and year-old announcements of excursions and county fairs hung above them; big stove set in a box of sawdust--all these were the regulation fixtures. Regulation also were the “refreshments” on the counter at the side--“turnovers” arranged cob-house fashion under a glass cover, with a dingy “Washington” pie under another cover, and jars of striped stick candy with boxes of “jawbreakers” and similar sweetmeats between.

It was snowing hard and, in the dusk of the winter evening, the flakes rustled against the windows as if unseen old ladies in starched summer gowns were shivering in the storm and crowding to get a peep within. The air in the shut waiting-room smelt of hot stove, sawdust, wet clothing and Mr. Clark’s cigar. To this collection of perfumes was presently added the odor of kerosene as the station agent lit the big lamps in their brackets on the wall.

From outside came the sounds of creaking wheels and stamping horses, the stamping muffled by the snow which covered the ground. Also some one, in a voice more vigorous than sweet, was heard to sing a chorus of “Hi, randy, dandy--o!” Mr. Clark and his friend took their feet down from the stove and looked expectantly toward the door, the former remarking that “Barney was feelin’ gay to-night,” and that he “must have a bottle of consolation along.”

The door opened and a big man, with a face of which gray whiskers and red nose were the most prominent features, came stamping and puffing into the room. He jerked off a pair of leather gloves, playfully shook the congealed moisture from them down Mr. Clark’s neck inside his collar, tossed a long whip into the corner, and, holding his spread fingers over the stove, began to sing “Whoa, Emma!” with enthusiasm.

Mr. Clark being too busy clawing the melting snow from his neck to open a conversation, Mr. Bodkin observed: “Hello, Barney! How’s the trav’lin’? Have a rough time drivin’ over?”

“Oh, middlin’ middlin’,” replied the driver of the Orham stage, unbuttoning his overcoat and reaching for his pipe; “but this earth’s a vale of tears, anyhow, so what’s the odds so long’s you’re happy. Hello, Dan!” The last a shouted greeting to the station agent in the little room, whose answer was a wave of the hand and a sidelong nod across the telegraph instrument.

“What’s doin’ over in Orham, Barney?” inquired Mr. Clark.

“Methodist folks are goin’ to start up temp’rance meetin’s; Seth Wingate’s bought a new horse; and ‘Hungry’ Bill Samuels has got another child--that’s the latest excitement jest about now. Not that ‘Hungry’ Bill’s baby was much of a surprise; you can gin’rally count on a new Samuels every year. The temp’rance revival is the reel thing, though; folks signin’ the pledge as if ’twas catchin’, like the measles.”

“You ain’t developed the symptoms yit, have you?” asked Mr. Clark, with a laugh.

“No, not yit. Lucky I was vaccinated young. I ain’t takin’ no chances, though; keep plenty of preventative in the house all the time;” and, with a profound wink, Mr. Small began to hum, “Cold water, cold water; oh, that is my song!”

“Oh, say!” he shouted, suddenly interrupting his own concert, “say, Dan! there _is_ some more news, after all. Come out here a minute; I want to tell you somethin’.”

The station agent turned his head in the speaker’s direction. “Go ahead,” he said, “I can hear you.”

“Well, I thought you’d be interested, bein’ as you used to live in Orham. Prissy and Tempy’s adopted a boy.”

The agent evidently was interested. “_What?_” he exclaimed.

“Prissy and Tempy’s took a boy to bring up. Oh, it’s a fact! It took me some time to b’lieve it, myself, but it’s so.”

“The old maids?”

“Yup, the old maids. I s’pose they come to reelize that they needed a man ’round the house, but as there wan’t no bids in that line, they sort of compromised on a boy.”

“You don’t mean the Allen old maids that live down on the ‘lower road,’ do you?” asked Mr. Bodkin.

“Sartin. I said _the_ old maids, didn’t I? There’s plenty of single women in Orham, but when you say ‘the old maids’ in our town, everybody knows you mean Prissy and Tempy.”

“I done a job for them once,” remarked Mr. Bodkin, reflectively. “I was over to Orham sellin’ berries. I warn’t reelly lookin’ for no work, you understand, but----”

“Yup, we understand,” said the stage driver, dryly. “It sort of reached out and nabbed you ’fore you could git away.”

“That’s it,” assented Ike, oblivious to the sarcasm. “I called at their place--it’s that big, old-fashioned house by John Baxter’s cranb’ry swamp, Lon--and Miss Prissy Allen, she bought the last of my huckleberries. Then she wanted to know if I wouldn’t mow the front yard. We had some dicker ’bout the price, but I fin’lly agreed to do it, so she showed me where the scythe was and I started in. And I swan to man,” continued Mr. Bodkin, excitedly, “if she didn’t stand on the front steps and watch me like a dog tryin’ to locate a flea, jumpin’ on me every minute or two to tell me that she thought I’d cut this part ‘’most an inch shorter’n I had that part,’ and so on. Fin’lly I got sick of her naggin’, and I says, jest to shame her, I says, ‘If I’d known you was so partic’lar,’ I says, ‘I’d a-brought my sperrit level along,’ I says. And says she, ‘There’s one that used to b’long to father out in the barn.’ Well, sir! that was too much for _me_! ‘I don’t mow grass by no sperrit level,’ says I, ‘and I tell you, I----’”

“What about the boy, Barney?” said the station agent, coming into the waiting-room.

“Why,” said Mr. Small, “it’s this way; seems that Prissy and Tempy’s father, old Cap’n D’rius Allen--he’s been dead six years or more now--had a niece name of Sophia, that married Cap’n Ben Nickerson over to Wellmouth. Cap’n Ben and his wife had one son; I think the boy’s name’s Bradley. Anyhow, Cap’n Ben and his wife was drowned off the Portuguese coast two years ago when Ben’s bark was lost; maybe you remember? Well, the boy was left at home that voyage with Ben’s ha’f brother, Solon Nickerson, so’s the youngster could go to school. When his folks was drownded that way the boy kept on livin’ with Solon till, ’bout three weeks ago, Solon was took with pneumony and up and died. Prissy and Tempy’s the only relations there was, you see, so it was left to them to say what should be done with the boy. I cal’late there must have been some high old pow-wowin’ in the old house, but the old maids are pretty conscientious, spite of their bein’ so everlastin’ ‘old maidy,’ and they fin’lly decided ’twas their duty to take the little feller to bring up. That’s the way _I_ heard the yarn. They kept it a secret until yesterday, but now the whole town’s talkin’ ’bout it. You see, it’s such a good joke for them two to have a boy in the house. Why, Prissy’s been used to shooin’ every stray boy off the place as if he was a hen.”

Mr. Small laughed so heartily at this that the others joined in. When the hilarity had subsided, the station agent asked:

“When’s the Nickerson boy comin’ over from Wellmouth?”

“Why, to-day, come to think of it. He was to come up on the afternoon train from Wellmouth and go to Orham with me to-night. You ain’t seen nothin’----”

The station agent interrupted him with a sidelong movement of the head.

“Huh?” queried Mr. Small. Then he, in company with Mr. Clark and Mr. Bodkin, turned toward the corner of the waiting-room.

The boy who had bought the apple “turnover,” having finished the last crumb of that viand, had turned to the window, and was looking out through a hole he had scraped in the frost on the pane. He had shaded his face with his hands to shut out the lamplight, and, though he must have heard the conversation, his manner betrayed no interest in it.

Mr. Small interrogated the station agent by raising his eyebrows. The agent whispered, “Shouldn’t wonder,” and added: “He came on the up-train this afternoon.”

“Hey, boy!” said Mr. Clark, who never let consideration for other people interfere with his own curiosity, “what’s your name?”

The boy turned from the window and, blinking a little as the light struck his eyes, faced the group by the stove. His freckled cheeks glistened as the light shone upon them, but, as if he knew this, he pulled the big sleeve of the overcoat across his face and rubbed them dry.

“What’s your name, sonny?” said the stage driver, kindly.

“Nickerson,” said the boy in a low tone.

“I want to know! Your fust name ain’t Bradley, is it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sho! well, there now! Guess you’re goin’ to ride over with me then. I drive the Orham coach. Hum! well, I declare!” And Mr. Small pulled his beard in an embarrassed fashion.

“Come over to the stove and get warm, won’t you?” asked the station agent.

“I ain’t cold,” was the reply.

“Well, ain’t you hungry now?” said Barney, who was afraid that his roughly told story had hurt the youngster’s feelings. “Won’t you have somethin’ to eat? One of them turnovers or some Washington pie, or somethin’, hey? Got a long ride ahead of you, you know.”

“He’s got outside of one turnover already,” said Clark, with a loud laugh, “and that’s enough to last most folks for a consid’rable spell. Haw! haw!”

“Shut up, Lon,” snapped the stage driver. “What d’you say, son? Somethin’ to eat?”

“I ain’t hungry, thank you,” said the boy, and turned to the window again.

The trio by the stove fidgeted in silence for a few moments, and then Mr. Small said, uneasily: “Ain’t it ’most time for that train to be in? She’s a ha’f hour late now.”

“She was twenty-five minutes late at Sandwich,” said the station agent, “and she’s prob’ly lost ten minutes or so since then. She’ll be along in a little while now.”

But in spite of this cheerful prophecy a full fifteen minutes passed before the train, which had been started from Boston with the vague idea that, some time or other, it might get to Provincetown, came coughing and panting ’round the curve and drew up at the station platform. Car roofs and sides, and tender and locomotive were plastered thick with snow, and the empty seats seen through the doors as the trainmen emerged, showed that travel for this night was very light indeed. In fact, only one passenger got out at the Harniss station, and he, stopping for a moment to hand his trunk check to the station agent, walked briskly into the waiting-room and slammed the door behind him.

“Hello!” he hailed, pulling off a buckskin glove and holding out a big hand to the stage driver. “Barney, how’s she headin’?”

Mr. Small grinned and took the proffered hand.

“Well, for the land’s sake, Ez Titcomb!” he exclaimed. “Where’d you drop from? Thought you was somewheres off the coast between New York and Portland jest ’bout now.”

“Got shore leave for a fortni’t or so,” said the newcomer, unbuttoning his overcoat with a smart jerk, and throwing it wide open. “Schooner sprung a leak off Gay Head last trip and she’s hauled up at East Boston for repairs. Dirty weather, ain’t it? Hello, Lon? How are you, Ike?”

Mr. Clark and his friend grinned and responded, “How are you, Cap’n Ez?” in unison.

The arrival was a short, thickset man, with a sunburned face, sharp eyes, hair that was a reddish brown sprinkled with gray, and a close-clipped mustache of the same color. He wore a blue overcoat over a blue suit, and held a cigar firmly in one corner of his mouth. His movements were quick and sharp, and he snapped out his sentences with vigor.

“Full cargo to-night?” he asked of Mr. Small, who was buttoning his overcoat and pulling on his gloves.

“Pretty nigh an empty hold,” was the reply. “Only ’bout one and a ha’f goin’ over. You’re the one and the boy here’s the ha’f.”

The Captain looked at the boy by the window and smiled pleasantly.

“Well, son,” he observed, “you and me’ll have the whole cabin to ourselves, won’t we?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the youngster. He had pulled from behind the settee an old-fashioned carpet-bag, the cadaverous sides of which testified that the wardrobe it held was not an extensive one. Mr. Clark, who had a reputation as a humorist to sustain, noticed the bag and rose to the occasion.

“Say, bub,” he said, “you ought to feed that satchel of yours two or three of them apple turnovers; maybe ’twould fat up some.”

Ike Bodkin roared at his friend’s witticism, and the boy turned red and looked out of the window once more. Captain Titcomb noticed the lad’s confusion, and remarked cheerfully:

“Lon, you remind me of that flyin’ machine old Cap’n Labe Saunders was perfectin’ for the five years afore he died. You’re fat and full of hot air, but you won’t work. Turnovers are all right; I like turnovers myself. All ready, Barney?”

“All aboard!” shouted the stage driver. “Come on, Brad. You and the Cap’n git inside, while me and Dan git the dunnage on the rack.”

The boy picked up the carpet-bag and followed Mr. Small out to the rear platform of the station, where the coach, an old-fashioned, dingy vehicle, drawn by four sleepy horses, stood waiting.

Captain Titcomb followed, his overcoat flapping in the wind.

“Here, Barney,” he observed, “have a cigar to smoke on the road. Have one, Dan? Here, Lon, here’s a couple for you and Ike. Who’s the little feller?” he added, in a whisper, to the station agent.

“Ben Nickerson’s boy from Wellmouth. He’s comin’ down to Orham to live with the old maids. They’ve adopted him.”

“The old maids? Not _the_ old maids? Not Prissy and Tempy?”

“Yup. All right, Barney; I’m comin’.”

The station agent hurried away to help the driver with the Captain’s sea chest, and its owner, apparently overcome with astonishment, climbed mutely into the coach, where his fellow passenger had preceded him.

The old vehicle rocked and groaned as the heavy chest was strapped on the racks behind. Then it tipped again, as Mr. Small climbed clumsily to the driver’s seat.

“All ashore that’s goin’ ashore!” shouted Mr. Small. “So long, Dan. Git dap, Two-forty!”

The whip cracked, the coach reeled on its springs, and the whole equipage disappeared in the snow and blackness.

“Humph!” grunted Mr. Clark, as he peered after it. “This ain’t no five-cent cigar. Might know it come from Ez Titcomb. It’s a queer thing that other coastin’ skippers have to put up with a pipe; but that ain’t Ez’s style--no sir-ee!”

“Yup,” assented Mr. Bodkin, “and that ain’t the only queer thing. How is it he can have such good clothes, and fetch home such nice presents and one thing or ’nother, when other fellows in the same bus’ness can’t. Oh, he’s smart, all right enough! Some folks thinks he’s _too_ smart. They say----”

“Some folks says he’ll bear watchin’,” continued Lon, puffing vigorously at the cigar. “Now, understand, _I_ don’t say nothin’, but----”

“If you fellers are intendin’ to sleep here you’d better be makin’ up your beds,” interrupted the station agent. “I’m goin’ to shut up shop and go home.”

* * * * *

This was in the days before the Orham Branch Railroad was built, and passengers for the latter village were obliged to leave the train at Harniss and take the ten-mile stage ride under the guidance of Mr. Small or his partner “Labe” Lothrop. The coaches were of about the same ages as their drivers, the horses were not so very many years younger, and the roads were deeply rutted, so the home-coming mariners of Orham, no matter how smooth their sea voyages might have been, were certain of a “rough passage” during the concluding portion of their journeys.

The boy, Bradley Nickerson, had never ridden in a stage coach before and, after ten or fifteen minutes of jolt and roll, he decided that he never wanted to ride in one again. He had chosen the middle seat, the back of which was a broad leather strap just high enough to slap him vigorously on the back of the head when he sat upright, and the cushions, from years of wear, sloped down to a sharp edge in front. If he crouched to avoid the strap, he was in danger of sliding off the seat altogether.

It was dark inside the coach and very stuffy, and the Captain was smoking. The snow struck the windows as if some one was throwing it in handfuls. There was some straw on the floor, intended to warm the feet of passengers who traveled on such nights as this, but Bradley’s feet did not reach the floor, and there was a vigorous draught of fresh air coming through the door cracks. In the lulls of the wind, Mr. Small’s voice was faintly heard singing “Beulah land” or swearing at the horses.

Suddenly Captain Titcomb, who had been silent so far, spoke.

“Heavy sea on to-night,” he observed. “’Pears to me Barney’d better take a reef. She’s rollin’ consider’ble.”

The boy laughed and said, “Yes, sir.”

“Goin’ all the way to Orham?” asked the Captain.

“Yes, sir.”

“Got folks over there, I presume likely. Friends, or nothin’ but jest relations?”

“Relations, I--I guess.”

“So! Well, I’ve got a good many relations over there myself. Fact is, I’ve got relations, seems to me, ’most everywheres. Father used to have so many of ’em, that when he went visitin’ he used to call it ’goin’ cousinin’.’ My name’s Titcomb; what do they call you when your back ain’t turned?”

The boy laughed again, in a puzzled way--he scarcely knew what to make of his questioner--and said that his name was Bradley Nickerson.

“Nickerson, hey? That settles it; you’re a Cape Codder. Minute I meet anybody named Nickerson I always know they’ve got the same kind of sand in their boots that I have. Is it Obed Nickerson’s folks you’re goin’ to see?”

“No, sir. I’m goin’ to live with Miss Priscilla Allen. Her and her sister; they was some of mother’s people.”

“Sho! well I swan!” muttered the Captain. “Prissy and Tempy, hey? Then Dan wan’t foolin’. And you’re goin’ to live with ’em?”

“Yes, sir. Do you know ’em?”

“Who--me? Oh, yes! I know ’em. I’m a partic’lar friend of theirs. That is,” he added, cautiously, “I call on ’em once in a while jest to say ‘How are you?’ Why? You didn’t hear any of them fellers at the depot say anything ’bout me and them, did you? No! Well, all right, I jest thought----. Oh, yes! I know ’em. Nice folks as ever was, but what you might call a little mite ‘sot in their ways.’ Do you always wipe your feet when you come into the house?”

“Why--why--yes, sir; if I don’t forget it.”

“All right; it’s a good habit to git into, ’specially if you’re goin’ to walk on Prissy’s floors. Sometimes I’ve wished I could manage to put my feet in my pocket when I’ve been there. I wonder if I knew your father? What was his name?”

Bradley told his father’s name and, in response to the Captain’s tactful questioning, a good deal more besides. In fact, before long Captain Titcomb knew all about the boy, where he came from, how he happened to come, and all the rest. And Bradley, for his part, learned that his companion commanded the coasting schooner _Thomas Doane_; that he had been a sailor ever since he was fourteen; that he had a marvelous fund of sea yarns and knew how to spin them; and that he--Bradley--liked him.

By and by the Captain noticed that the boy’s replies to his cheerful observations were growing rather incoherent, and, suspecting the reason, he ceased to talk. A few minutes later he leaned forward and smiled to find his fellow traveler, who had slipped down upon the cushion, fast asleep. Carefully he drew up the boy’s feet, made him more comfortable, and taking the worn laprobe from his own knees, threw it over the sleeper. Bradley dozed on in the darkness. An hour went by, and then he was awakened by the coach stopping. Outside some one was yelling, “Hi, there!” at the top of his lungs.

“Don’t be scared, Bradley,” said the Captain. “It’s only foolish Sol.”

He lowered the upper half of the window as he spoke and Bradley saw a light zig-zagging down a bank by the roadside. As it came nearer he saw that it was a lantern in the hands of a tall man with red whiskers, who, muffled in a striped tippet and a mangy fur cap, came stumbling through the snow to the coach.

“Hello, Sol!” hailed Mr. Small from the box. “What d’you want?”

“Hi, there!” said the man with the lantern. “Got any terbacker?”

The stage driver produced a plug, cut off a fair-sized chunk with a big knife, and handed it down to the man.

“There you be,” he observed, and added, “would you b’lieve it, Sol, I kind of s’picioned you wanted terbacker when I fust heard you.”

“Here’s a plug I brought on purpose for you, Sol,” said Captain Titcomb, handing a carefully wrapped package through the open window.

The man grinned, took the tobacco, and stood grinning and bowing as the coach went on.

“That’s foolish Sol Newcomb,” explained Captain Titcomb. “His top riggin’s out of gear, but he’s a harmless critter. Lives off in the woods here, and there ain’t a trip this coach makes, day or night, that he ain’t waitin’ for it, to beg terbacker. Some folks carry a piece on purpose for him.”

The next time Bradley awoke, Captain Titcomb was standing on the ground by the open door of the coach.

“Good night, Brad,” he said. “Here’s where I’m bound for. You’ve got a five-minute ride or so more ’fore you git to the old mai--that is, to Prissy and Tempy’s. I’ll see you to-morrer. You and me’s goin’ to be chums, you know.”

The door was shut; Mr. Small struck up “Camptown Races,” and the stage bumped on again. This time the boy did not sleep, but, holding on to the strap, tried to peer through the snow-crusted window. He saw a light here and there, but little else. After a short interval the coach turned a sharp corner, rolled on for perhaps twice its length, and then stopped.

Mr. Small opened the door and Bradley, looking past him, saw the side of a large house, and a lighted doorway with two female figures, one plump and the other slender, standing in it. From behind them the lamplight streamed warm and bright and sent their shadows almost to his feet.

“Come on, bub,” said the stage driver, “here’s where you git out. Miss Prissy,” he shouted, “here’s your new boarder.”