Captain Close Author:Charles King Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: head wobbling a bit in spite of his efforts at self-control. Presently he began to speak, slowly and impressively at first, then winding up in a verbal entanglem... more »ent: " Missur Lam-p-bert, I didn't know I was talkin' to—Yankee officer—but—I'm a gen'l'm'n, suh, an' I stan' by wh-wha—I say. I mean to stan' your frien', suh; but as fo' that oth—felluh—Close—I'll see'm in 'ell first." It was snn-up and snapping cold when the brakeman shouted " Tugaloo," and gratefully Lambert stepped from the train and felt free air. Mr. Potts was sleeping soundly, doubled up in one of the seats. The only wakeful bipeds in sight were the conductor and his trainman. Unseen hands forward had shoved the trunk out upon the frosty boards. The sun was just peeping over a low wooded ridge before them. The track wound away among some desolate fields where tiny flakes of cotton still clung to the brown and withered stalks. In a cloud of steam the train pulled away, leaving Lambert and his trunk to look after each other as best they might, and as the cloud lifted the young officer looked curiously around him. He was standing on a rude wooden platform whose shrunken planks left black, gaping seams between their upper faces, now, at least, beautiful in their thick coat of sparkling white. Except where the footmarks of the trainmen marred the smooth expanse, and where in two or three places the planks were gone entirely, this gleaming sheet stretched the length of the platform to where the white bulk of his trunk stood on end at the eastern edge. The charred and blackened relic of a flight of stairs led from the platform to the sloping ground some five feet below, but not even a hand-rail warned the unwary against a breakneck plunge into space. Part of the platform itself had been burned away, and some char...« less