Hesba Stretton - The Ultimate Christmas Library - 100+ Authors, 200 Novels, Novellas, Stories, Poems and Carols

The express messenger had received a signal from Mr. Carter, and now said:

“I tell you what it is, Mr. Bulson; I can’t help you out. The matter is entirely out of my hands. Just before you came in the conductor levied on all my goods in transit and claimed the right to seize your case of milk for the benefit of the passengers. You’ll have to send in your claim to our company, and it will get the value of the milk from the railroad people for you. That’s all there is to it.”

“What?” roared Mr. Bulson, aghast at these words.

“You heard me,” responded the expressman, handing Mr. Carter a hammer and nail puller.

The conductor kneeled down and proceeded to open the box. The fat man would have torn his hair only he was bald and there was none he could spare.

“Get away from that box! get away!” he commanded, fairly dancing about the car. “Do you know what I’ll do? I’ll sue the company.”

“All right. Begin suit at once,” growled Mr. Carter. “Get out an injunction right away. Don’t fret; you’ll get your share of the milk with the rest of us.”

“Why, it’s all mine,” croaked the fat man, hoarse with wrath. “I’ll show you— ”

“Go ’way,” ordered a burly brakeman, pushing him aside, and stooping to help pull off the cover of the box. “You ought to be taken out and dumped in the snow, mister. It would cool you off.”

“Come, Bess!” urged Nan, anxiously. “Let’s go away. We’ll get the milk for the puppy afterward. I’m afraid there will be trouble.”

“I wish they would throw that mean old Bulson into the snow. He deserves it,” Bess returned bitterly.

“Do let’s go away,” Nan said again, as the men’s voices became louder.

“Oh, dear me! you never will let me have any fun,” declared Bess, her eyes sparkling.

“Do you call a public brawl, fun?” demanded Nan, as they opened the door of the car.

At that moment, just as the two girls with the squirming, shivering puppy, were about to step out upon the platform between the baggage cars, they were startled by a muffled shout from overhead.

“Oh! what’s that?” gasped Bess.

Both she and Nan looked up. Lumps of snow from the roof of the tunnel began to fall. Then came a louder shout and a pair of booted legs burst through the roof.

“Goodness— gracious— me!” cried Nan. “Here comes— ”

“An angelic visitor!” squealed Bess.

With another shout of alarm, a snow-covered figure plunged to the platform. The cowhide boots landed first, so the man remained upright. He carried a can in each hand, and all around the covers was frozen milk, betraying at once the nature of his load.

He was a slim, wiry man, in a ragged greatcoat, a cap pulled over his ears, sparkling, little, light-blue eyes of phenomenal shrewdness, and a sparse, strawcolor chin-whisker.

“Wall, I vow to Maria!” gasped the newcomer. “What’s this I’ve dropped into?”

Bess was now laughing so that she could not speak, and the puppy was barking as hard as he could bark. Nan managed to ask:

“Who are you, sir, and where did you come from?”

“Si Snubbras is my name,” declared the “heavenly visitor.” “And I reckon I’m nearer home than you be, Miss, for I live right east of the railroad-cut, here. I was jest goin’ across to Peleg Morton’s haouse with this yere milk, when I— I sorter dropped in,” and Farmer Snubbins went off into a fit of laughter at his own joke.

Mr. Si Snubbins was a character, and he plainly was very much pleased with himself. His little, sharp eyes apprehended the situation quickly.

“I vow to Maria!” repeated the farmer. “Ye air all snowed up here, ain’t ye? A hull trainful o’ folks. Wall!”

“And oh, Mr. Snubbins!” said Nan Sherwood, “you have milk in those cans, haven’t you?”

“Sure have, Miss.”

“Oh, Mr. Carter!” called Nan, running back into the forward car; “here’s a man with fresh milk. You don’t have to take Mr. Bulson’s.”

“What’s that?” demanded the baggage-man, Jim, in surprise. “Where’d he get it? From that cow-tree your friend was telling us about?”

“What’s this about fresh milk?” asked Mr. Carter. “Be still, Bulson. You roar to fit your name. We can’t hear the little lady.”

“Who’s that?” snarled the excited Bulson, glaring at Nan. “How came that girl on this train? Isn’t that the Sherwood girl?”

But nobody paid the fat man much attention just then. The crew crowded after Nan and Mr. Carter toward the open door of the car.

“Hul-lo” exclaimed Mr. Carter, when he saw the farmer and realized how he had “dropped in.” “That milk for sale?”

“Why, mister,” drawled Snubbins, “I’m under contrac’ ter Peleg Morton ter deliver two cans of milk to him ev’ry day. I wasn’t goin’ to have him claim I hadn’t tried ter fulfil my part of the contrac’, so I started ’cross-lots with the cans.”

“How’s he going to get the milk to the creamery?” demanded Mr. Carter, shrewdly.

Si’s eyes twinkled. “That’s his part of the contrac’; ’tain’t mine,” he said. “But if ye ax me, I tell ye honest, Mr. Conductor, I don’t see how Peleg’s goin’ ter do it. This is a sight the heaviest snow we’ve had for ten year.”

“What’ll you sell that milk for?” interrupted the anxious conductor. “Fresh milk will be a whole lot better for these kiddies we’ve got in the smoker than condensed milk. Just the same,” he added, “I shall hold on to Bulson’s shipment.”

“What’ll I take for this milk, mister?” repeated Snubbins, cautiously. “Wall, I dunno. I’spect the price has gone up some, because o’ the roads being blocked.”

“That will do— that will do,” Mr. Carter hastened to say. “I’ll take the milk, give you a receipt, and you can fight it out with the claim agent. I believe,” added Mr. Carter, his lips twisting into a grim smile, “that you are the farmer whose cow was killed by this very train last fall, eh?”

“Ya-as,” said Si Snubbins, sorrowfully. “Poor Sukey! She never knew what hit her.”

“But the claim agent knew what hit the road when you put in your claim. That old cow wasn’t worth more than ten dollars and you demanded fifty. Don’t raise the tariff on this milk proportionately, for I’m sure the agent will not allow the claim.”

Mr. Snubbins grinned and chuckled.

“I’ll run my risk— I’ll run my risk,” he responded. “You kin have the milk for nawthin’, if ye want it so bad. Bein’ here all night, I expect ye be purty sharp-set, the whole on ye.”

Mr. Carter had picked up the cans and had gone forward to have the milk thawed out at the boiler fire. Some of the brakemen had cleared away the snow by now and there was an open passage to the outside world. The keen kind blew in, and the pale, wintry sunshine lighted the space between the baggage cars. Mr. Snubbins grinned in his friendly way at the two girls.

“I reckon you gals,” he said, “would just like to be over to my house where my woman could fry you a mess of flap-jacks. How’s that?”

“Oh, don’t mention it!” groaned Bess.

“Is your house near?” asked Nan.

“Peleg’s the nighest. ‘Tain’t so fur. And when ye git out on top o’ the snow, the top’s purty hard. It blew so toward the end of that blizzard that the drifts air packed good.”

“Yet you broke through,” Bess said.

“Right here, I did, for a fac’” chuckled the farmer. “But it’s warm down here and it made the snow soft.”

“Of course!” cried Nan Sherwood. “The stale air from the cars would naturally make the roof of the tunnel soft.”