"That's right! You just remember Uncle Peter every day, but don't you worry for him, and some day maybe I'll come and get you. I've got a lot of work to do first that you wouldn't understand, such as building up a new man from the ground to the top of his head, but I'll get it done some time, and I'll come for you the first thing after I do. You want I should, don't you?"
For the rest of the way to town Peter held the boy very close _in_ his arms, and did not think of his tired muscles at all. He was thinking of his perfidy to the trusting child, for he was without money and without it he could see nothing to do but deliver the boy to Briggles and the Unknown.
THE Marcy's Run Road, on which Peter's sister lived, led into Riverbank past the cemetery, and near the cemetery stood a group of small stores. One of these, half grocery and half saloon, was even more unkempt than the others, but before its window Peter stopped. A few small coins--the residue after his purchasing trip of the day before--remained in his pocket, and in the window was a square of cardboard announcing "Hot Beef Soup To-day."
Hot beef soup, when a man has tramped many miles carrying a heavy child, is a temptation. Buddy himself would be glad of a bowl of hot soup, and Peter opened the door and entered.
The store was narrow and dark. A few feet, just inside the door, were occupied by the scanty stock of groceries, tobacco and cheap candy, and back of this was the bar, with two small tables in the space before it. The whole place was miserably dirty. It was no gilded liquor palace, with mirrors and glittering cash-registers. The bar was of plain pine, painted "barn-red," and the whole arrangement was primitive and cheap. Beyond the bar room a partition cut off the living room, and this completed "Mrs. Crink's Place."
Mrs. Crink had a bad reputation. During the stringent prohibition days she had run a "speak-easy" without paying the town the usual monthly disorderly house fine, and had served her term in jail. After that she was strongly suspected of boot-legging whisky, and she had purchased this new place but a few days since. She was a thin, sour-faced, angular woman, ugly alike in face and temper. When Peter opened the door a bell sounded sharply, but the high voice of Mrs. Crink in the living room drowned the bell. She was scolding and reviling at the top of her voice--swearing like a man--and a child was sobbing and pleading. Peter heard the sharp slap of a hand against a face, and a cry from the child, and Mrs. Crink came into the bar room, her eyes glaring and her face dark with anger.