The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1903-10-10
frank II. Spearmau'J Rallr0aA 5fo11eg
THE Master Mechanic 5 Story
Continued from Second Page.

passes Delaroo had quietly been directing
the right honorable recording secretaries
to make the benefits run to Neighbor, and
so every dollar of his insurance ran.
Nobody was more thunderstruck at the
discovery than the master mechanic him.
self. IS
. Yet Delaroo meant something by 1t. I
After Neighbor had studied over it nights
the best of q month; after Maize Sampson
had tried to take the color test and failed,
as he persistently said he would; after he
had gone to tinkering in the roundhouse /
and from tinkering respectfully. and by de-
grees down the hill to wiping at dollar
and forty cents day, with time and a
half for overtime Neighbor bethought
himself all of a sudden one day Of paper
Delaroo had once given him and asked him
to keep.
He had put it away in the storekeeper's
safe with his own papers and the drawings
Of his extension front end patent-and
safely forgotten all about it. It was the
day they had to go into the county court
about the will that was not, when he rec
objected Delaroo's paper and pulled it OF. /
of its envelope. There was only a half
sheet Of paper inside, with this writing
from Delaroo to Neighbour:
II. B. A-What is coming to me on en-
| surance give to Marty Sampson wife of
Maize. Give my trunk to P. McGraw.
Rispk., p. De La Roux.
|
before the probate judge Maze Sampson
took attending; Martie hid her face in
her shawl, crying again. Maybe glin-
mer of what 1t meant came for the first
| time In her life over her. Maybe she re-
membered Delaroo as he used to sit with
them under the kerosene lamp while Maze
untiringly pounded the money question
into hin-smoking as he listened, and
Martie mended on never-ending trousers
Looking from Maize Sampson, heated with
monologue, to his wife, patiently stitch.
ing. No comments; just looking as Pierre
Delaroux could look. ~
Strange, Neighbor thought it., and yet
may be, not so strange. It was all there,
in the paper-the torn, worn little book,
of Delaroo's life. She was the only woman
on earth that had ever done him a kind
ness. TX -- Il ~ Il.
Nobody at Medicine Bend quite UNDER
stood it; but nobody at Medicine Bend
quite suspected that under all the barren
ness up at Maize SIMPSONS an ambition
could have survived; yet one had. Martie
had an ambition. Way down under her
= faded eyes and her faded dress there was
an ambition, and that for the least prom
Using subjects in the Rocky Mountains
the brickbats. Under the unending mend.
ing and the poverty and the toll Martie,
who never put her nose out of doors, who
! never attended church social never ven
tured even to a free public school show
the two biggest to go to the state univer-
sity; wanted them to go and get an edu-
cation. And they went; and MAZE Samp-
son says them boys, airy one, has forgot
ten more about the money question than
he ever knew. 1t looks as if after all the
brickbats might come out; bit of money
I in Martie's hands goes so far.
There are a few soldiers buried at the
Bend. Decoration Day there is an at$
tempt at turnout; a little speeding and
a little marching. A tllin,T straggle coll
unn of the same warped, bent old fell
lows in the same faded old blue. Up the
hill they go and around to the cemetery
i to decorate.
! When they turn at Maize SIMPSONS
! place-there's a gate there now-Martie
and more or less of the boys, and Maize,
kind of join in along and go over with
them carrying a basket or so of flowers
and a bucket of water.
|. The boys soon stray over to where the
crowd is, around the graves of the Heroes.
Z But Marie gets down by a grave some
what apart and prOds the drifting gravel
all up loose with an old case knife. You
, would think she might be kneading bread
there the way she sways under her sun
bonnet and gloves-for her little boiled
. hands are in gloves now. .,.~.s.
IT don't know how much good it does
Delaroo spiking up his grave once a year. -
Neighbor always winds up. 1T may not
do him blamed bit of good I don't say
it does. But can see them. see them
from the roundhouse, it does me good.
HIM." go 1r
! s''Maje?" he will add. ''Why, I've got
him over there at the house, wiping. I'm
going to put him running the stationary
if old John Boxer ever dies. When will
he die? Blamed if know. John is a
pretty good man yet. can't kill him, can
I? Well, then, what's matter with
!, you? s..1. d. +a.--. .>"5
t'No, MAZE don't talk as much as he
used to- forgetting his passes more or
: less, too. Getting old like some more OF
u.s. He's kind Of quit the money question;
} claims he don't understand it now as well
, as the boys do But he can talk about
+. Delaroo; he understands Delaroo pretty
well-now."