A Place so Foreign
A Place so Foreign
Book Excerpt
ore?" I said, scandalised. My Pa's wonderful store, the
only General Store in town not run by the Saints, was my second home. I'd spent
my whole life crawling and then walking on the dusty wooden floors, checking
stock and unpacking crates with waybills from exotic places like Salt Lake City
and even San Francisco.
Pa looked uncomfortable. "Mr Johnstone is buying it."
My mouth dropped. James H Johnstone was as dandified a city-slicker as you'd ever hope to meet. He'd blown into town on the weekly Zephyr Speedball, and skinny Tommy Benson had hauled his three huge steamer trunks to the cowboy hotel. He'd tipped Tommy two dollars, in Wells-Fargo notes, and later, in the empty lot behind the smithy, all the kids in New Jerusalem had gathered 'round Tommy to goggle at the small fortune in queer, never-seen bills.
"Pa, no!" I said, without thinking. I knew that if my chums ordered their fathers around like that, they'd get a whipping, but my Pa almost never whipped me.
He smiled, and stretched his thic
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