Captains and The Kings by Taylor Caldwell Page A

you get thrown in the pokey for a couple days, and that's all. When you get out you get ten dollars, from me. And the next Sunday you're on the job again. Simple. On a different route." Joseph considered. Four dollars a week! He made but four for six days a week, twelve hours a day, in a sawmill on the river. It would come to eight dollars a week, a fortune. He looked at the fat man and loathed him. It was not just the fact that Joseph suspected that here was no mere grain- and-feed and harness merchant but a probable bootlegger transporting illegal whiskey from Virginia and adjoining Southern states. (Joseph, remembering Ireland, had no reverence for duly constituted authority, mainly British.) But the man exuded a dirty slyness and crafty evil that revolted him. "If you're thinking that I wouldn't pay you the ten dollars," said the man. "I've no fear of that," said Joseph. "After all, if you didn't, I'd go to the police, myself, and let my tongue wag." The fat man howled with laughter and slapped Joseph's knee. "That's what I like! A man with spirit. Loyal, that's what it is. I treat you fair, you treat me fair. No quarrels, no argufying. Fair and square. And you'll deliver right, too. I'm a man that keeps my word. And I got friends that help me, if a man does me wrong. Understand?" "You mean thugs," said Joseph. "Hell, you're a man after my own heart, Joe! I love you. Call 'em thugs if you want to. Who cares? I put all my cards on the table, see? Nothing up my sleeve. Come next Sunday. Six in the morning. 'Til six at night. Then you get your money, see?" Joseph stood up. "Thank you. I will be here at six next Sunday, Mr. Squibbs." He walked out of the gloomy anonymous little building that stood on the edge of the small town of Winfield, Pennsylvania. It was a wooden building and held but two offices and two desks and a few tables and chairs. On the side in huge white-washed letters was the legend: squibbs bros. dealers in wholesale grain and feed. harness. Behind the office building was a vast and well-kept stable of big dappled horses and vans. Behind this building was a warehouse of bagged corn and other grains, and harness. It was seemingly very legitimate. The warehouse and stables were full of men, not openly working-for that was forbidden on the Sabbath in Pennsylvania-but merely caring for the horses and watering and grooming and feeding them. Some saw Joseph emerge from the offices and studied him acutely, smoking their pipes, their caps pulled down over their brows. New fellow. Tall and hard-looking, and steady. Trust old Squibbs to pick them right. Never made but one mistake, and that was a smooth Federal spy, and nobody ever saw that one again anywhere. Nobody. And trust old Squibbs, too. If a wagon was ever traced back to him- and that was easy, his name on the wagons-he didn't know nothing, either. Some trusted employee had taken advantage of him, that's all, doing some illegal work for some bootlegger or somebody on Sundays. Old Squibbs had the chief of police in his pocket, and was a big contributor to the Party. Even knew the mayor, Tom Hennessey. Of course, the police, and even-body, knew it was old Squibbs all the time, but he never got hauled in, no sir. And none of his men ever served more than a day in the pokey, either. All the police and the Big Fellows asked was that nobody talked and made no fuss, though they had to take a little action when some blue-nose suspected and complained. Just a little action, every now and then, to keep the citizens quiet, and besides old Squibbs did do a feed and grain business open to anyone's inspection, and very profitable, too. It was the "Sunday lads" who sometimes got into trouble, not the regular boys on the weekdays. Old Squibbs took care of his own, and you could say that for him, and the good wages. Winfield was one hundred fifty miles from Pittsburgh, a dun little town which had no major industry but the sawmills on the river. Yet, it was a rich town, for many