Preface (part 2)

I was the first to suggest this feature in conference. The Trescott scare had made me more thoughtful. True, outwardly things were more than ever booming. The very signs on the streets spoke of the boom. It was “Lumber, Coal, and Real Estate”; “Burbank’s Livery, Feed, and Sale Stable. Office of Burbank Realty Co.”; or “Thronson & Larson, Grocers. Choice Lots in Thronson’s Addition.” Even Giddings had platted the “Herald Addition,” and was offering a choice quarter-block as a prize to the person who could guess nearest to the average monthly increase in values in the addition, as shown by the record of sales. Real estate appeared as a part of the business of hardware stores and milliners’ shops, so that one was constantly reminded of the heterogeneous announcements on the signboard of Mr. Wegg. But while all this went on, and transactions “in dirt” were larger than ever, one could see indications that there was in them a larger and larger element of credit, and less and less cash. So one day, at a syndicate conference, I sought to ease my mind by asking where this thing was to stop, and when we could hope for a time when the town would not have to be held up by main strength.

“Why, that’s a very remarkable question!” said Mr. Hinckley. “We surely haven’t reached the point where we can think of stopping. Why, with the history before us of the cities of America which, without half our natural advantages, have grown to so many times the size of this, I’m surprised that such a thing should be thought of! Just think of what Chicago was in ’54 when I came through. A village without a harbor, built along the ditches of a frog-pond! And see it now; see it now!”

There was a little quiver in Mr. Hinckley’s voice, a little infirmity of his chin, which told of advancing years. His ideas were becoming more fixed. It was plain that the notion of Lattimore’s continued and uninterrupted progress was one to which he would cling with the mild and unreasoning stubbornness of gentlemanly senility. But Cornish welcomed the discussion with something like eagerness.

“I’m glad the matter has come up,” said he. “We’ve had a few good years here; but, in the nature of things, won’t the time come when things will be—slower? We’ve got our first plans pretty well worked out. The mills, factories, and live-stock industries are supporting population, and making tonnage which the railroad is carrying. But what next? We can’t expect to build any more railroads soon. No line of less than five hundred miles will do any good, strategically speaking, and sending out stubs just to annex territory for our shippers is too slow and expensive business for this crowd. Things are booming along now; but the Eastern banks are getting finicky about paper, and—I think things are going to be—slower—and that we ought to act accordingly.”

There was a long silence, broken only by a dry laugh from Hinckley, and the remark that Barslow and Cornish must be getting dyspeptic from high living.

“Well,” said Elkins at last, ignoring Hinckley and facing Cornish, “get down to brass nails! What policy would you adopt?”

“Oh, our present policy is all right,” answered he of the Van Dyke beard—

“Yes, yes!” interjected Hinckley. “My view exactly. A wonderfully successful policy!”

“—and,” Cornish continued, “I would only suggest that we cease spreading out—not cease talking it, but only just sort of stop doing it—and begin to realize more rapidly on our holdings. Not so as to break the market, you understand; but so as to keep the demand fairly well satisfied.”

Mr. Elkins was slow in replying, and when the reply came it was of the sort which does not answer.

“A most important, not to say momentous question,” said he. “Let’s figure the thing over and take it up again soon. We’ll not begin to disagree at this late day. Mr. Hinckley has warned us that he has an engagement in thirty minutes. It seems to me we ought to dispose of the matter of the appropriation for the interest on those Belt Lines bonds. Wade’s mash on ‘Atkins, Corning & Co.’ won’t last long in the face of a default.”

Mr. Hinckley staid his thirty minutes and withdrew. Mr. Cornish went to the telephone and ordered his dog-cart.

“Immediately,” he instructed, “over here at the Grain Belt Trust Building.”

“Make it in half an hour, can’t you, Cornish?” said Jim. “There are some more things we ought to go over.”

“Say!” shouted Cornish into the transmitter. “Make that in half an hour instead of at once.”

He hung up the telephone, and turned to Elkins inquiringly. Jim was walking up and down on the rug, his hands clasped behind him.

“Since we’ve spread out into that string of banks,” said he, still keeping up his walk, “and made Mr. Hinckley the president of each of ’em, he’s reverting to his old banker’s timidity. Which consists, in all cases, in an aversion to any change in conditions. To suggest any change, even from an old, dangerous policy to a new safe one, startles a ‘conservative’ banker. If we had gone on a little longer with our talk about shutting off steam and taking the nigger off the safety-valve, you’d have seen him scared into a numbness. But, now that the question has been brought up, let’s talk it over. What’s your notion about it, anyhow, Al?”

“I’m seeking light,” said I. “The people are rushing in, and the town’s doing splendidly. But prices, there’s no denying it, are beginning to sort of strangle things. They prevent doing, any more, what we did at first. Kreuger Brothers’ failure yesterday was small; but it’s a clear case of a retailer’s being eaten up with fixed charges—or so Macdonald told me this morning; and I know that frontage on Main Street is demanding fully as much as the traffic will bear. And then our fright over Trescott’s gambling gave me some bad dreams over our securities. It has bothered me to see how to adjust our affairs to a stationary condition of things; that’s all.”

“Of course,” said Cornish, “we must keep boosting. Fortunately society here is now thoroughly organized on the principle of whooping it up for Lattimore. I could get up a successful lynching-party any time to attend to the case of any miscreant who should suggest that property is too high, or rents unreasonable, or anything but a steady up-grade before us. But I think we ought to stop buying—except among ourselves, and keep the transfers from falling off—and begin salting down.”

“If you can suggest any way to do that, and still take care of our paper,” said Jim, “I shall be with you.”

“I’ve never anticipated,” said Cornish, “that such a mass of business could be carried through without some losses. Investors can’t expect it.”

“The first loss in the East through our paper,” said Jim, “means a taking up of the Grain Belt securities everywhere, and no market for more. And you know what that spells.”

“It mustn’t be allowed to happen—yet awhile,” answered Cornish. “As I just now said, we must keep on boosting.”

“You know where the Grain Belt debentures and other obligations are mostly held, of course?” asked Mr. Elkins.

“When a bond or mortgage is sold,” was the answer, “my interest in it ceases. I conclusively presume that the purchaser himself personally looked to the security, or accepted the guaranty of the negotiating trust company. Caveat emptor is my rule.”

Mr. Elkins looked out of the window, as if he had forgotten us.

“We should push the sale of the Lattimore & Great Western,” said he, “and the Belt Line System.”

“I concur,” said Cornish. “Our interest in those properties is a two-million-dollar cash item.”

“It wouldn’t be two million cents,” said Jim, “if our friends on Wall Street could hear this talk. They’d wait to buy at receiver’s sale after some Black Friday. Of course, that’s what Pendleton and Wade have been counting on from the first.”

“You ought to see Halliday and Pendleton at once,” said I.

“Yes, I think so, too,” he rejoined. “Pendleton’ll pay us more than our price, rather than see the Halliday system get the properties. They’re deep ones; but we ought to be able to play them off against each other, so long as we can keep strong at home. I’ll begin the flirtation at once.”

Cornish, assuming that Jim had fully concurred in his views, bade us a pleasant good-day, and went out.

“My boy,” said Jim, “cheer up. If gloom takes hold of you like this while we’re still running before a favoring wind, it’ll bother you to keep feeling worse and worse, as you ought, as we approach the real thing. Cheer up!”

“Oh, I’m all right!” said I. “I was just trying to make out Cornish’s position.”

“Let’s make out our own,” he replied, “that’s the first thing. Bear in mind that this is a buccaneering proposition, and you’re first mate: remember? Well, Al, we’ve had the merriest cruise in the books. If any crew ever had doubloons to throw to the birds, we’ve had ’em. But, you know, we always draw the line somewhere, and I’m about to ask you to join me in drawing the line, and see just what moral level piracy has risen or sunk to.”

He still walked back and forth, and, as he spoke of drawing the line, he drew an imaginary one with his fingers on the green baize of the flat-topped desk.

“You remember what those fellows, Dorr and Wickersham, said the other night, about having invested the funds of estates, and savings accounts in our obligations?” he went on. “But I never told you what Wickersham said privately to me. The infernal fool has more of our paper than his bank’s whole capital stock, with the surplus added, amounts to! And he calls himself a ‘conservative New England banker’! It wouldn’t be so bad if the states back East weren’t infested with the same sort of idiots—I’ve had Hinckley make me a report on it since that night. It means that women and children and sweaty breadwinners have furnished the money for all these things we’re so proud of having built, including the Mt. Desert cottages and the Wyoming hunting-lodge. It means that we’ve got to be able to read our book of the Black Art backwards as well as forwards, or the Powers we’ve conjured up will tear piecemeal both them and us. God! it makes me crawl to think of what would happen!”

He sat down on the flat-topped desk, and I saw the beaded pallor of a fixed and digested anxiety on his brow. He went on, in a lighter way:

“These poor people, scattered from the Missouri to the Atlantic, are our prisoners, Al. I think Cornish is ready to make them walk the plank. But, Al, you know, in our bloodiest days, down on the Spanish Main, we used to spare the women and children! What do you say now, Al?”

The way in which he repeated the old nickname had an irresistible appeal in it; but I hope no appeal was needed. I said, and said truly, that I should never consent to any policy which was not mindful of the interests of which he spoke; and that I knew Hinckley would be with us. So, if Cornish took any other view, there would be three to one against him.

“I knew you’d be with me,” he continued. “It would have been a sure-enough case of et tu, Brute, if you hadn’t been. But don’t let yourself think for a minute that we can’t fight this thing to a finish and come off more than conquerors. We’ll look back at this talk some time, and laugh at our fears. The troublous times that come every so often are nearer than they were five years ago, but they’re some ways off yet, and forewarned is insured.”

“But the hard times always catch people unawares,” said I.

“They do,” he admitted, “but they never tried to stalk a covey of boom specialists before.... You remember all that rot I used to talk about the mind-force method, and psychological booms? We’ve been false to that theory, by coming to believe so implicitly in our own preaching. Why, Al, this work we’ve begun here has got to go on! It must go on! There mustn’t be any collapse or failure. When the hard times come, we must be prepared to go right on through, cutting a little narrower swath, but cutting all the same. Stand by the guns with me, and, in spite of all, we’ll win, and save Lattimore—and spare the captives, too!”

There was the fire of unconquerable resolution in his eye, and a resonance in his voice that thrilled me. After all he had done, after the victories we had won under his leadership, the admiration and love I felt for him rose to the idolatry of a soldier for his general, as I saw him stiffening his limbs, knotting his muscles, and, with teeth set and nostrils dilated, rising to the load which seemed falling on him alone.

“I’ll make the turn with these railroad properties,” he went on. “We must make Pendleton and Halliday bid each other up to our figure. And there’ll be no ‘salting down’ done, either—yet awhile. I hope things won’t shrink too much in the washing; but the real-estate hot air of the past few years must cause some trouble when the payments deferred begin to make the heart sick. The Trust Company will be called on to make good some of its guaranties—and must do it. The banks must be kept strong; and with two millions to sweeten the pot we shall be with ’em to the finish. Why, they can’t beat us! And don’t forget that right now is the most prosperous time Lattimore ever saw; and put on a look that will corroborate the statement when you go out of here!”

“Bravo, bravo!” said a voice from near the door. “I don’t understand any of it, but the speech sounded awfully telling! Where’s papa?”

It was Antonia, who had come in unobserved. She wore a felt hat with one little feather on it, driving-gloves, and a dark cloth dress. She stood, rosy with driving, her blonde curls clustering in airy confusion about her forehead, a tailor-gowned Brunhilde.

“Why, hello, Antonia!” said Jim. “He went away some time ago. Wasn’t that a corking good speech? Ah! You never know the value of an old friend until you use him as audience at the dress rehearsal of a speech! Pacers or trotters?”

“Pacers,” said she, “Storm and The Friar.”

“If you’ll let me drive,” he stipulated, “I’d like to go home with you.”

“Nobody but myself,” said she, “ever drives this team. You’d spoil The Friar’s temper with that unyielding wrist of yours; but if you are good, you may hold the ends of the lines, and say ‘Dap!’ occasionally.”

And down to the street we went together, our cares dismissed. Jim handed Antonia into the trap, and they spun away toward Lynhurst, apparently the happiest people in Lattimore.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The Going Away of Laura and Clifford, and the Departure of Mr. Trescott.

“Thet little quirly thing there,” said Mr. Trescott, spreading a map out on my library table and pointing with his trembling and knobby forefinger, “is Wolf Nose Crick. It runs into the Cheyenne, down about there, an’ ’s got worlds o’ water fer any sized herds, an’ carries yeh back from the river fer twenty-five miles. There’s a big spring at the head of it, where the ranch buildin’s is; an’ there’s a clump o’ timber there—box elders an’ cottonwoods, y’ know. Now see the advantage I’ll have. Other herds’ll hev to traipse back an’ forth from grass to water an’ from water to grass, a-runnin’ theirselves poor; an’ all the time I’ll hev livin’ water right in the middle o’ my range.”

His wife and daughter had carefully nursed him through the fever, as Dr. Aylesbury called it, and for two weeks Mr. Trescott was seen by no one else. Then from our windows Alice and I could see him about his grounds, at work amongst his shrubbery, or busying himself with his horses and carriages. Josie had transformed herself into a woman of business, and every day she went to her father’s office, opened his mail, and held business consultations. Whenever it was necessary for papers to be executed, Josie went with the lawyer and notary to the Trescott home for the signing.

The Trescott and Tolliver business brought her into daily contact with the Captain. He used to open the doors between their offices, and have the mail sorted for Josie when she came in. There was something of homage in the manner in which he received her into the office, and laid matters of business before her. It was something larger and more expansive than can be denoted by the word courtesy or politeness.

“Captain,” she would say, with the half-amused smile with which she always rewarded him, “here is this notice from the Grain Belt Trust Company about the interest on twenty-five thousand dollars of bonds which they have advanced to us. Will you please explain it?”

“Sutt’nly, Madam, sutt’nly,” replied he, using a form of address which he adopted the first time she appeared as Bill’s representative in the business, and which he never cheapened by use elsewhere. “Those bonds ah debentures, which—”

“But what are debentures, Captain?” she inquired.

“Pahdon me, my deah lady,” said he, “fo’ not explaining that at fuhst! Those ah the debentures of the Trescott Development Company, fawmed to build up Trescott’s Addition. We sold those lands on credit, except fo’ a cash payment of one foath the purchase-price. This brought to us, as you can see, Madam, a lahge amount of notes, secured by fuhst mortgages on the Trescott’s Addition properties. These notes and mortgages we deposited with the Grain Belt Trust Company, and issued against them the bonds of the Trescott Development Company—debentures—and the G. B. T. people floated these bonds in the East and elsewhah. This interest mattah was an ovahsight; I should have looked out fo’ it, and not put the G. B. T. to the trouble of advancing it; but as we have this mawnin’ on deposit with them several thousand dollahs from the sale of the Tolliver’s Subdivision papah, the thing becomes a mattah of no impo’tance whatevah!”

“But,” went on Josie, “how shall we be able to pay the next installment of interest, and the principal, when it falls due?”

“Amply provided foh, my deah Madam,” said the Captain, waving his arm; “the defe’ed payments and the interest on them will create an ample sinking fund!”

“But if they don’t?” she inquired.

“That such a contingency can possibly arise, Madam,” said the Captain in his most impressive orotund, and with his hand thrust into the bosom of his Prince Albert coat, “is something which my loyalty to Lattimore, my faith in my fellow citizens, my confidence in Mr. Elkins and Mr. Barslow, and my regahd fo’ my own honah, pledged as it is to those to whom I have sold these properties on the representations I have made as to the prospects of the city, will not puhmit me to admit!”

This seemed to him entirely conclusive, and cut off the investigation. Conversation like this, in which Josie questioned the Captain and seemed ever convinced by his answers, gave her high rank in the Captain’s estimation.

“Like most ladies,” said he, “Miss Trescott is a little inclined to ovah-conservatism; but unlike most people of both sexes, she is quite able to grasp the lahgest views when explained to huh, and huh mental processes ah unerring. I have nevah failed to make the most complicated situation cleah to huh—nevah!”

And all this time Mr. Trescott was safeguarded at home, looking after his horses, carriages, and grounds, and at last permitted to come over to our house and pass the evening with me occasionally. It was on one of these visits that he spread out the map on the table and explained to me the advantages of his ranch on Wolf Nose Creek. The very thought of the open range and the roaming herds seemed to strengthen him.

“You talk,” said I, “as if it were all settled. Are you really going out there?”

“Wal,” said he, after some hesitation, “it kind o’ makes me feel good to lay plans f’r goin’. I’ve made the deal with Aleck Macdonald f’r the water front—it’s a good spec if I never go near it—an’ I guess I’ll send a bunch o’ steers out to please Josie an’ her ma. They’re purtendin’ to be stuck on goin’, an’ I’ve made the bargain to pacify ’em; but, say, do you know what kind of a place it is out on one o’ them ranches?”

“In a general way, yes,” said I.

“W’l, a general way wun’t do,” said he. “You’ve got to git right down to p’ticklers t’ know about it, so’s to know. It’s seventy-five miles from a post-office an’ twenty-five to the nearest house. How would you like to hev a girl o’ yourn thet you’d sent t’ Chicago an’ New York and the ol’ country, an’ spent all colors o’ money on so’s t’ give her all the chanst in the world, go out to a place like that to spend her life?”

“I don’t know,” said I, for I was in doubt; “it might be all right.”

“You wouldn’t say that if it was up to you to decide the thing,” said he. “W’y it would mean that this girl o’ mine, that’s fit for to be—wal, you know Josie—would hev to leave this home we’ve built—that she’s built—here, an’ go out where there hain’t nobody to be seen from week’s end to week’s end but cowboys, an’ once in a while one o’ the greasy women o’ the dugouts. Do you know what happens to the nicest girls when they don’t see the right sort o’ men—at all, y’ know?”

I nodded. I knew what he meant. Then I shook my head in denial of the danger.

“I don’t b’lieve it nuther,” said he; “but is it any cinch, now? An’ anyhow, she’ll be where she wun’t ever hear a bit o’ music, ’r see a picter, ’r see a friend. She’ll swelter in the burnin’ sun an’ parch in the hot winds in the summer, an’ in the winter she’ll be shet in by blizzards an’ cold weather. She’ll see nothin’ but kioats, prairie-dogs, sage-brush, an’ cactus. An’ what fer! Jest for nothin’ but me! To git me away from things she’s afraid’ve got more of a pull with me than what she’s got. An’ I say, by the livin’ Lord, I’ll go under before I’ll give up, an’ say I’ve got as fur down as that!”

It is something rending and tearing to a man like Bill, totally unaccustomed to the expression of sentiment, to give utterance to such depths of feeling. Weak and trembling as he was, the sight of his agitation was painful. I hastened to say to him that I hoped there was no necessity for such a step as the one he so strongly deprecated.

“I d’ know,” said he dubiously. “I thought one while that I’d never want to go near town, ’r touch the stuff agin. But I’ll tell yeh something that happened yisterday!”

He drew up his chair and looked behind him like a child preparing to relate some fearsome tale of goblin or fiend, and went on:

“Josie had the team hitched up to go out ridin’, an’ I druv around the block to git to the front step. An’ somethin’ seemed to pull the nigh line when I got to the cawner! It wa’n’t that I wanted to go—and don’t you say anything about this thing, Mr. Barslow; but somethin’ seemed to pull the nigh line an’ turn me toward Main Street; an’ fust thing I knew, I was a-drivin’ hell-bent for O’Brien’s place! Somethin’ was a-whisperin’ to me, ‘Go down an’ see the boys, an’ show ’em that yeh can drink ’r let it alone, jest as yeh see fit!’ And the thought come over me o’ Josie a-standin’ there at the gate waitin’ f’r me, an’ I set my teeth, an’ jerked the hosses’ heads around, an’ like to upset the buggy a-turnin’. ‘You look pale, pa,’ says Josie. ‘Maybe we’d better not go.’ ‘No,’ says I, ‘I’m all right.’ But what ... gits me ... is thinkin’ that, if I’ll be hauled around like that when I’m two miles away, how long would I last ... if onst I was to git right down in the midst of it!”

I could not endure the subject any longer; it was so unutterably fearful to see him making this despairing struggle against the foe so strongly lodged within his citadel. I talked to him of old times and places known to us both, and incidentally called to his mind instances of the recovery of men afflicted as he was. Soon Josie came after him, and Jim dropped in, as he was quite in the habit of doing, making one of those casual and informal little companies which constituted a most distinctive feature of life in our compact little Belgravia.

Josie insisted that life in the cow country was what she had been longing for. She had never shot any one, and had never painted a cowboy, an Indian, or a coyote—things she had always longed to do.

“You must take me out there, pa,” said she. “It’s the only way to utilize the capital we’ve foolishly tied up in the department of the fine arts!”

“I reckon we’ll hev to do it, then, little gal,” said Bill.

“My mind,” said Jim, “is divided between your place up on the headwaters of Bitter Creek and Paris. Paris seems to promise pretty well, when this fitful fever of business is over and we’ve cleaned up the mill run.”

Art, he went on, seemed to be a career for which he was really fitted. In the foreground, as a cowboy, or in the middle distance, in his proper person as a tenderfoot, it seemed as if there was a vocation for him. Josie made no reply to this, and Jim went away downcast.

The Addison-Giddings wedding drew on out of the future, and seemed to loom portentously like doom for the devoted Clifford. It may have suggested itself to the reader that Mr. Giddings was an abnormally timid lover. The eternal feminine at this time seemed personified in Laura, and worked upon him like an obsession. I have never seen a case quite like his. The manner in which the marriage was regarded, and the extent to which it was discussed, may have had something to do with this.

The boom period anywhere is essentially an era in which public events dominate those of a private character, and publicity and promotion, hand in hand, occupy the center of the stage. Giddings, as editor and proprietor of the Herald, was one of the actors on whom the lime-light was pretty constantly focussed. Miss Addison, belonging to the Lattimore family, and prominent in good works, was more widely known than he among Lattimoreans of the old days, sometimes referred to by Mr. Elkins as the trilobites, who constituted a sort of ancient and exclusive caste among us, priding themselves on having become rich by the only dignified and purely automatic mode, that of sitting heroically still, and allowing their lands to rise in value. These regarded Laura as one of themselves, and her marriage as a sacrament of no ordinary character.

Giddings, on the other hand, as the type of the new crowd who had done such wonders, and as the embodiment of its spirit, was dimly sensed by all classes as a sort of hero of obscure origin, who by strong blows had hewed his way to the possession of a princess of the blood. So the interest was really absorbing. Even the Herald’s rival, the Evening Times, dropped for a time the normal acrimony of its references to the Herald, and sent a reporter to make a laudatory write-up of the wedding.

On the night before the event, deep in the evening, Giddings and a bibulous friend insisted on having refreshments served to them in the parlor of the clubhouse. This was a violation of rules. Moreover, they had involuntarily assumed sitting postures on the carpet, rendering waiting upon them a breach of decorum as well. At least this was the view of Pearson, who was now attached to the club.

“You must excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, “but Ah’m bound to obey rules.”

“Bring us,” said Giddings, “two cocktails.”

“Can’t do it, sah,” said Pearson, “not hyah, sah!”

“Bring us paper to write resignations on!” said Giddings. “We won’t belong to a club where we are bullied by niggers.”

Pearson brought the paper.

“They’s no rule, suh,” said he, “again’ suhvin’ resignation papah anywhah in the house. But let me say, Mistah Giddings, that Ah wouldn’t be hasty: it’s a heap hahder to get inter this club now than what it was when you-all come in!”

This suggestion of Pearson’s was in every one’s mouth as the most amusing story of the time. Even Giddings laughed about it. But all his laughter was hollow.

Some bets were offered that one of two things would happen on the wedding-day: either Giddings (who had formerly been of abstemious habits) would overdo the attempt to nerve himself up to the occasion and go into a vinous collapse, or he would stay sober and take to his heels. Thus, in fear and trembling, did the inexplicable disciple of Iago approach his happiness; but, like most soldiers, when the battle was actually on, he went to the fighting-line dazed into bravery.

It was quite a spectacular affair. The church was a floral grotto, and there were, in great abundance, the adjuncts of ribbon barriers, special electric illuminations, special music, full ritual, ushers, bridesmaids, and millinery. Antonia was chief bridesmaid, and Cornish best man. The severe conformity to vogue, and preservation of good form, were generally attributed to his management. It was a great success.

There was an elaborate supper, of which Giddings partook in a manner which tended to prove that his sense of taste was still in his possession, whatever may have been the case with his other senses. Josie was there, and Jim was her shadow. She was a little pale, but not at all sad; her figure, which had within the past year or so acquired something of the wealth commonly conceded to matronliness, had waned to the slenderness of the day I first saw her in the art-gallery, but now, as then, she was slim, not thin. To two, at least, she was a vision of delight, as one might well see by the look of adoration which Jim poured into her eyes from time to time, and the hungry gaze with which Cornish took in the ruddy halo of her hair, the pale and intellectual face beneath it, and the sensuous curves of the compact little form. For my own part, my vote was for Antonia, for the belle of the gathering; but she sailed through the evening, “like some full-breasted swan,” accepting no homage except the slavish devotion of Cecil, whose constant offering of his neck to her tread gave him recognition as entitled to the reward of those who are permitted only to stand and wait.

Mr. Elkins had furnished a special train over the L. & G. W. to make the run with the bridal party to Elkins Junction, connecting there with the east-bound limited on the Pendleton line, thence direct to Elysium.

Laura, rosy as a bride should be, and actually attractive to me for the first time in her life, sat in her traveling-dress trying to look matter-of-fact, and discussing time-tables with her bridegroom, who seemed to find less and less of dream and more of the actual in the situation,—calm returning with the cutaway. Cecil and the coterie of gilded youth who followed him did their share to bring Giddings back to earth by a series of practical jokes, hackneyed, but ever fresh. The largest trunk, after it reached the platform, blossomed out in a sign reading: “The Property of the Bride and Groom. You can Identify the Owners by that Absorbed Expression!” Divers revelatory incidents were arranged to eventuate on the limited train. Precipitation of rice was produced, in modes known to sleight-of-hand only. So much of this occurred that Captain Tolliver showed, by a stately refusal to see the joke, his disapproval of it—a feeling which he expressed in an aside to me.

“Hoss-play of this so’t, suh,” said he, “ought not to be tolerated among civilized people, and I believe is not! In the state of society in which I was reahed such niggah-shines would mean pistols at ten paces, within fo’ty-eight houahs, with the lady’s neahest male relative! And propahly so, too, suh; quite propahly!”

“Shall we go to the train, Albert?” said Alice, as the party made ready to go.

“No,” said I, “unless you particularly wish it; we shall go home.”

“Mr. Barslow,” said one of the maids, “you are wanted at the telephone.”

“Is this you, Al?” said Jim’s voice over the wire. “I’m up here at Josie’s, and I am afraid there’s trouble with her father. When we got here we found him gone. Hadn’t you better go out and look around for him?”

“Have you any idea where I’m likely to find him?” I asked. I saw at once the significance of Bill’s absence. He had taken advantage of the fact of his wife and daughter’s going to the wedding, and had yielded to the thing which drew him away from them.

“Try the Club, and then O’Brien’s,” answered Jim. “If you don’t find him in one place or the other, call me up over the ’phone. Call me up anyhow; I’ll wait here.”

The Times man heard my end of the conversation, saw me hastily give Alice word as to the errand which kept me from going home with her, observed my preparations for leaving the company, and, scenting news, fell in with me as I was walking toward the Club.

“Any story in this, Mr. Barslow?” he asked.

“Oh, is that you, Watson?” I answered. “I was going on an errand which concerns myself. I was going alone.”

“If you’re looking for any one,” he said, trotting along beside me, “I can find him a good deal quicker than you can, probably. And if there’s news in it, I’ll get it anyhow; and I’ll naturally know it more from your standpoint, and look at it more as you do, if we go together. Don’t you think so?”

“See here, Watson,” said I, “you may help if you wish. But if you print a word without my consent, I can and will scoop the Times every day, from this on, with every item of business news coming through our office. Do you understand, and do you promise?”

“Why, certainly,” said he. “You’ve got the thing in your own hands. What is it, anyhow?”

I told him, and found that Trescott’s dipsomania was as well known to him as myself.

“He’s been throwing money to the fowls for a year or two,” he remarked. “It’s better than two to one you don’t find him at the Club: the atmosphere won’t be congenial for him there.”

At the Club we found Watson’s forecast verified. At O’Brien’s our knocking on the door aroused a sleepy bartender, who told us that no one was there, but refused to let us in. Watson called him aside, and they talked together for a few minutes.

“All right,” said the reporter, turning away from him, “much obliged, Hank; I believe you’ve struck it.”

Watson was leader now, and I followed him toward Front Street, near the river. He said that Hank, the barkeeper, had told him that Trescott had been in his saloon about nine o’clock, drinking heavily; and from the company he was in, it was to be suspected that he would be steered into a joint down on the river front. We passed through an alley, and down a back basement stairway, came to a door, on which Watson confidently knocked, and which was opened by a negro who let us in as soon as he saw the reporter. The air was sickening with an odor which I then perceived for the first time, and which Watson called the dope smell. There was an indefinable horror about the place, which so repelled me that nothing but my obligation could have held me there. The lights were dim, and at first I could see nothing more than that the sides of the room were divided into compartments by dull-colored draperies, in a manner suggesting the sections of a sleeping-car. There were sounds of dreadful breathings and inarticulate voices, and over all that sickening smell. I saw, flung aimlessly from the crepuscular and curtained recesses, here the hairy brawn of a man’s arm, there a woman’s leg in scarlet silk stocking, the foot half withdrawn from a red slipper with a high French heel. The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows had opened for me, and I stood as if gazing, with eyes freshly unsealed to its horrors, into some dim inferno, sibilant with hisses, and enwrapped in indeterminate dragon-folds—and I in quest of a lost soul.

“He wouldn’t go with his pal, boss,” I heard the negro say. “Ah tried to send him home, but he said he had some medicine to take, an’ he ‘nsisted on stayin’.”

As he ceased to speak, I knew that Watson had been interrogating him, and that he was referring to the man we sought.

“Show me where he is,” I commanded.

“Yes, boss! Right hyah, sah!”

In an inner room, on a bed, not a pallet like those in the first chamber, was Trescott, his head lying peacefully on a pillow, his hands clasped across his chest. Somehow, I was not surprised to see no evidence of life, no rise and fall of the breast, no sound of breathing. But Watson started forward in amazement, laid his hand for a moment on the pallid forehead, lifted for an instant and then dropped the inert hand, turned and looked fixedly in my face, and whispered, “My God! He’s dead!”

As if at some great distance, I heard the negro saying, “He done said he hed ter tek some medicine, boss. Ah hopes you-all won’t make no trouble foh me, boss—!”

“Send for a doctor!” said I. “Telephone Mr. Elkins, at Trescott’s home!”

Watson darted out, and for an eternity, as it seemed to me, I stood there alone. There was a scurrying of the vermin in the place to snatch up a few valuables and flee, as if they had been the crawling things under some soon-to-be-lifted stone, to whom light was a calamity. I was left with the Stillness before me, and the dreadful breathings and inarticulate voices outside. Then came the clang and rattle of ambulance and patrol, and in came a policeman or two, a physician, a Herald man and Watson, who was bitterly complaining of Bill for having had the bad taste to die on the morning paper’s time.

And soon came Jim, in a carriage, whirled along the street like a racing chariot—with whom I rode home, silent, save for answering his questions. Now the wife, gazing out of her door, saw in the street the Something for which she had peered past me the other night.

The men carried it in at the door, and laid it on the divan. Josie, her arms and shoulders still bare in the dress she had worn to the wedding, broke away from Cornish, who was bending over her and saying things to comfort her, and swept down the hall to the divan where Bill lay, white and still, and clothed with the mystic majesty of death. The shimmering silk and lace of her gown lay all along the rug and over the divan, like drapery thrown there to conceal what lay before us. She threw her arms across the still breast, and her head went down on his.

“Oh, pa! Oh, pa!” she moaned, “you never did any one any harm!... You were always good and kind!... And always loving and forgiving.... And why should they come to you, poor pa ... and take you from the things you loved ... and ... murder you ... like this!”

Jim fell back, as if staggering from a blow. Cornish came forward, and offered to raise up the stricken girl, whose eyes shone in her grief like the eyes of insanity. Alice stepped before Cornish, raised Josie up, and supported her from the room.

Again it was morning, when we—Alice, Jim, and I—sat face to face in our home. An untasted breakfast was spread before us. Jim’s eyes were on the cloth, and nothing served to rouse him. I knew that the blow from which he had staggered still benumbed his faculties.

“Come,” said I, “we shall need your best thought down at the Grain Belt Building in a couple of hours. This brings things to a crisis. We shall have a terrible dilemma to face, it’s likely. Eat and be ready to face it!”

“God!” said he, “it’s the old tale over again, Al: throw the dead and wounded overboard to clear the decks, and on with the fight!”

CHAPTER XIX.

In Which Events Resume their Usual Course—at a Somewhat Accelerated Pace.

The death of Mr. Trescott was treated with that consideration which the affairs of the locally prominent always receive in towns where local papers are in close financial touch with the circle affected. Nothing was said of suicide, or of the place where the body was found; and in fact I doubt if the family ever knew the real facts; but the property matters were looked upon as a legitimate subject for comment.

“Yesterday,” said, in due time, the Herald, “the Trescott estate passed into the hands of Will Lattimore, as administrator. He was appointed upon the petition of Martha D. Trescott, the widow. His bond, in the sum of $500,000, was signed by James R. Elkins, Albert F. Barslow, J. Bedford Cornish, and Marion Tolliver, as sureties, and is said to be the largest in amount ever filed in our local Probate Court.

“Mr. Lattimore is non-committal as to the value of the estate. The bond is not to be taken as altogether indicative of this value, as additional bonds may be called for at any time, and the individual responsibility of the administrator is very large. He will at once enter upon the work of settling up the estate, receiving and filing claims, and preparing his report. He estimates the time necessary to a full understanding of the extent and condition of his trust at weeks and even months.

“The petition states that the deceased died intestate, leaving surviving him the petitioner and an only child, a daughter, Josephine. As Miss Trescott has attained her majority, she will at once come into the possession of the greater part of this estate, becoming thereby the richest heiress in this part of the West. This fact of itself would render her an interesting person, an interest to which her charming personality adds zest. She is a very beautiful girl, petite in figure, with splendid brown hair and eyes. She is possessed of a strong individuality, has had the advantages of the best American and Continental schools, and is said to be an artist of much ability. Mrs. Trescott comes of the Dana family, prominent in central Illinois from the earliest settlement of the state.

“President Elkins, of the L. & G. W., who, perhaps, knows more than any other person as to the situation and value of the various Trescott properties, could not be seen last night. He went to Chicago on Wednesday, and yesterday wired his partner, Mr. Barslow, that business had called him on to New York, where he would remain for some time.”

In another column of the same issue was a double-leaded news-story, based on certain rumors that Jim’s trip to New York was taken for the purpose of financing extensions of the L. & G. W. which would develop it into a system of more than a thousand miles of line.

“Their past successes have shown,” said the Herald in editorial comment on this, “that Mr. Elkins and his associates are resourceful enough to bring such an undertaking, gigantic as it is, quite within their abilities. The world has not seen the best that is in the power of this most remarkable group of men to accomplish. Lattimore, already a young giantess in stature and strength, has not begun to grow, in comparison with what is in the future for her, if she is to be made the center of such a vast railway system as is outlined in the news item referred to.”

From which one gathers that the young men left by Mr. Giddings in charge of his paper were entirely competent to carry forward his policy.

Jim had gone to Chicago to see Halliday, hoping to rouse in him an interest in the Belt Line and L. & G. W. properties; but on arriving there had telegraphed to me that he must go to New York. This message was followed by a letter of explanation and instructions.

“Halliday spends a good deal of his time in New York now,” the letter read, “and is there at present. His understudy here advised me to go on East. I should rather see him there than here, on account of the greater likelihood that Pendleton may detect us: so I’m going. I shall stay as long as I can do any good by it. Lattimore won’t get the condition of the estate worked out for a month, and until we know about that, there won’t anything come up of the first magnitude, and even if there should, you can handle it. I don’t really expect to come back with the two million dollars for the L. & G. W., but I do hope to have it in sight!

“In all your prayers let me be remembered; ‘if it don’t do no good, it won’t do no harm,’ and I’ll need all the help I can get. I’m going where the lobster à la Newburg and the Welsh rabbit hunt in couples in the interest of the Sure-Thing game; where the bird-and-bottle combine is the stalking-horse for the Frame-up; and where the Flim-flam (I use the word on the authority of Beaumont, Fletcher & Giddings) has its natural habitat. I go to foster the entente cordiale between our friends Pendleton and Halliday into what I may term a mutual cross-lift, of which we shall be the beneficiaries—in trust, however, for the use and behoof of the captives below decks.

“Giddings and Laura are here. I had them out to a box party last night. They are most insufferably happy. Clifford is not sane yet, but is rallying. He is rallying considerably; for he spoke of plans for pushing the Herald Addition harder than ever when he gets home. And you know such a thing as business has never entered his mind for six months—unless it was business to write that ‘Apostrophe to the Heart,’ which he called a poem, and which, I don’t mind admitting now, I hired his foreman to pi after the copy was lost.

“Keep everything as near ship-shape as you can. Watch the papers, or they may do us more harm in a single fool story than can be remedied by wise counter-mendacity in a year. Especially watch the Times, although there’s mighty little choice between them. You and Alice ought to spend as much time at the Trescotts’ as you can spare. You’ll hear from me almost daily. Wire anything of importance fully. Keep the L. & G. W. extension story before the people; it may make some impression even in the East, but it’s sure to do good in the local fake market. Don’t miss a chance to jolly our Eastern banks. I should declare a dividend—say 4%—on Cement stock. At Atlas Power Company meeting ask Cornish to move passing earnings to surplus in lieu of dividend, on the theory of building new factories—anyhow, consult with the fellows about it: that money will be handy to have in the treasury before the year is out, unless I am mistaken. Sorry I can’t be at these meetings. Will be back for those of Rapid Transit and Belt Line Companies.

“Yours,
”Jim.

“P. S.—Coming in, I saw a group of children dancing on a bridge, close to a schoolhouse, down near the Mississippi. I guess no one but myself knew what they were doing; but I recognized our old ‘Weevilly Wheat’ dance. I could imagine the ancient Scotch air, which the noise of the train kept me from hearing, and the old words you and I used to sing, dancing on the Elk Creek bridge:

“‘We want no more of your weevilly wheat,
We want no more your barley;
But we want some of your good old wheat,
To make a cake for Charley!’

“You remember it all! How we used to swing the little girls around, and when we remembered it afterwards, how we would float off into realms of blissful companionship with freckled, short-skirted, bare-legged angels! Things were simpler then, Al, weren’t they? And to emphasize that fact, my mind ran along the trail of the ‘Weevilly Wheat’ into the domain of tickers, margins, puts and calls, and all the cussedness of the Board of Trade, and came bump against poor Bill’s bucket-shop deals, and settled down to the chronic wonder as to just how badly crippled he was when he died. If Will gets it figured out soon, at all accurately, wire me.

“J.”

The wedding tour came to an end, and the bride and groom returned long before Mr. Elkins did. Giddings dropped into my office the day after their return, and, quite in his old way, began to discuss affairs in general.

“I’m going to close out the Herald Addition,” said he. “Real estate and newspaper work don’t mix, and I shall unload the real estate. What do you say to an auction?”

“How can you be sure of anything like an adequate scale of prices?” said I; “and won’t you demoralize things?”

“It’ll strengthen prices,” he replied, “the way I’ll manage it. This is the age of the sensational—the yellow—and you people haven’t been yellow enough in your methods of selling dirt. If you say sensationalism is immoral, I won’t dispute it, but just simply ask how the fact happens to be material?”

I saw that he was going out of his way to say this, and avoided discussion by asking him to particularize as to his methods.

“We shall pursue a progressively startling course of advertising, to the end that the interest shall just miss acute mania. I’ll have the best auctioneer in the world. On the day of the auction we’ll have a series of doings which will leave the people absolutely no way out of buying. We’ll have a scale of upset prices which will prevent loss. Why, I’ll make such a killing as never was known outside of the Fifteen Decisive Battles. I sha’n’t seem to do all this personally. I shall turn the work over to Tolliver; but I’ll be the power behind the movement. The gestures and stage business will be those of Esau, but the word-painting will be that of Jacob.”

“Well,” said I, “I see nothing wrong about your plan; and it may be practicable.”

“There being nothing wrong about it is no objection from my standpoint,” said he. “In fact, I think I prefer to have it morally right rather than otherwise, other things being equal, you know. As for its practicability, you watch the Captain, and you’ll see!”

This talk with Giddings convinced me that he was entirely himself again; and also that the boom was going on apace. It had now long reached the stage where the efforts of our syndicate were reinforced by those of hundreds of men, who, following the lines of their own interests, were powerfully and effectively striving to accomplish the same ends. I pointed this out in a letter to Mr. Elkins in New York.

“I am glad to note,” said he in reply, “that affairs are going on so cheerfully at home. Don’t imagine, however, that because a horde of volunteers (most of them nine-spots) have taken hold, our old guard is of any less importance. Do you remember what a Prince Rupert’s drop is? I absolutely know you don’t, and to save you the trouble of looking it up, I’ll explain that it is a glass pollywog which holds together all right until you snap off the tip of its tail. Then a job lot of molecular stresses are thrown out of balance, and the thing develops the surprising faculty of flying into innumerable fragments, with a very pleasing explosion. Whether the name is a tribute of Prince Rupert’s propensity to fly off the handle, or whether he discovered the drop, or first noted its peculiarities, I leave for the historian of the Cromwellian epoch to decide. The point I make is this. Our syndicate is the tail of the Lattimore Rupert’s drop; and the Grain Belt Trust Co. is the very slenderest and thinnest tip of the pollywog’s propeller. Hence the writer’s tendency to count the strokes of the clock these nights.”

Dating from the night of Trescott’s death, and therefore covering the period of Jim’s absence, I could not fail to notice the renewed ardor with which Cornish devoted himself to the Trescott family. Alice and I, on our frequent visits, found him at their home so much that I was forced to the conclusion that he must have had some encouragement. During this period of their mourning his treatment of both mother and daughter was at once so solicitously friendly, and so delicate, that no one in their place could have failed to feel a sense of obligation. He sent flowers to Mrs. Trescott, and found interesting things in books and magazines for Josie. Having known him as a somewhat cold and formal man, Mrs. Trescott was greatly pleased with this new view of his character. He diverted her mind, and relieved the monotony of her grief. Cornish was a diplomat (otherwise Jim would have had no use for him in the first place), and he skilfully chose this sad and tender moment to bring about a closer intimacy than had existed between him and the afflicted family. It was clearly no affair of mine. Nevertheless, after several experiences in finding Cornish talking with Josie by the Trescott grate, I considered Jim’s interests menaced.

“Well,” said Alice, when I mentioned this feeling, “Mr. Cornish is certainly a desirable match, and it can scarcely be expected that Josie will remain permanently unattached.”

There was a little resentment in her voice, for which I could see no reason, and therefore protested that, under all circumstances, it was scarcely fair to blame me for the lady’s unappropriated state.

“Under other conditions,” said I, “I assure you that I should not permit such an anomaly to exist—if I could help it.”

The incident was then declared closed.

During this absence of Jim’s, which, I think, was the real cause of Alice’s displeasure, the Herald Addition sale went forward, with all the “yellow” features which the minds of Giddings and Tolliver could invent. It began with flaring advertisements in both papers. Then, on a certain day, the sale was declared open, and every bill-board and fence bore posters puffing it. A great screen was built on a vacant lot on Main Street, and across the street was placed, every night, the biggest magic lantern procurable, from which pictures of all sorts were projected on the screen, interlarded with which were statements of the Herald Addition sales for the day, and quotations showing the advance in prices since yesterday. And at all times the coming auction was cried abroad, until the interest grew to something wonderful. Every farmer and country merchant within a hundred miles of the city was talking of it. Tolliver was in his highest feather. On the day of the auction he secured excursion rates on all of the railroads, and made it a holiday. Porter’s great military band, then touring the country, was secured for the afternoon and evening. Thousands of people came in on the excursions and it seemed like a carnival. Out at the piece of land platted as the Herald Addition, whither people were conveyed in street-cars and carriages during the long afternoon the great band played about the stands erected for the auctioneer, who went from stand to stand, crying off the lots, the precise location of the particular parcel at any moment under the hammer being indicated by the display of a flag, held high by two strong fellows, who lowered the banner and walked to another site in obedience to signals wigwagged by the enthusiastic Captain. The throng bid excitedly, and the clerks who made out the papers worked desperately to keep up with the demands for deeds. It was clear that the sale was a success. As the sun sank, handbills were scattered informing the crowd that in the evening Tolliver & Company, as a slight evidence of their appreciation of the splendid business of the day, would throw open to their friends the new Cornish Opera House, where Porter’s celebrated band would give its regular high-class concert. Tolliver & Company, the bill went on, took pleasure in further informing the public that, in view of the great success of the day’s sale, and the very small amount to which their holdings in the Herald Addition were reduced, the remainder of this choice piece of property would be sold from the stage to the highest bidder, absolutely without any reservation or restriction as to the price!

I had received a telegram from Jim saying that he would return on a train arriving that evening, and asking that Cornish, Hinckley, and Lattimore be at the office to meet him. I was on the street early in the evening, looking with wonder at the crowds making merry after the dizzy day of speculative delirium. At the opera house, filled to overflowing with men admitted on tickets, the great band was discoursing its music, in alternation with the insinuating oratory of the auctioneer, under whose skilful management the odds and ends of the Herald Addition were changing owners at a rate which was simply bewildering.

“Don’t you see,” said Giddings delightedly, “that this is the only way to sell town lots?”

Jim came into the office, fresh and buoyant after his long trip, his laugh as hearty and mirth-provoking as ever. After shaking hands with all, he threw himself into his own chair.

“Boys,” said he, “I feel like a mouse just returning from a visit to a cat convention. But what’s this crowd for? It’s nearly as bad as Broadway.”

We explained what Giddings and Tolliver had been doing.

“But,” said he, “do you mean to tell me that he’s sold that Addition to this crowd of reubs?”

“He most certainly has,” said Cornish.

“Well, fellows,” replied Jim, “put away the accounts of this as curiosities! You’ll have some difficulty in making posterity believe that there was ever a time or place where town lots were sold with magic lanterns and a brass band! And don’t advertise it too much with Dorr, Wickersham and those fellows. They think us a little crazy now. But a brass band! That comes pretty near being the limit.”

“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Lattimore, “I shall have to leave you soon; and will you kindly make use of me as soon as you conveniently can, and let me go?”

“Have you got the condition of the Trescott estate figured out?” said Mr. Elkins.

“Yes,” said the lawyer.

We all leaned forward in absorbed interest; for this was news.

“Have you told these gentlemen?” Jim went on.

“I have told no one.”

“Please give us your conclusions.”

“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Lattimore, “I am sorry to report that the Trescott estate is absolutely insolvent! It lacks a hundred thousand dollars of being worth anything!”

There was a silence for some moments.

“My God!” said Hinckley, “and our trust company is on all that paper of Trescott’s scattered over the East!”

“What’s become of the money he got on all his sales?” asked Jim.

“From the looks of the check-stubs, and other indications,” said Mr. Lattimore, “I should say the most of it went into Board of Trade deals.”

Cornish was swearing in a repressed way, and above his black beard his face was pale. Elkins sat drumming idly on the desk with his fingers.

“Gentlemen,” said he, “I take it to be conceded that unless the Trescott paper is cared for, things will go to pieces here. That’s the same as saying that it must be taken up at all hazards.”

“Not exactly,” said Cornish, “at all hazards.”

“Well,” said Jim, “it amounts to that. Has any one any suggestions as to the course to be followed?”

Mr. Cornish asked whether it would not be best to take time, allow the probate proceedings to drag along, and see what would turn up.

“But the Trust Company’s guaranties,” said Mr. Hinckley, with a banker’s scent for the complications of commercial paper, “must be made good on presentation, or it may as well close its doors.”

“The thing won’t ‘drag along’ successfully,” said Jim. “Have you a schedule of the assets?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Lattimore. “The life-insurance money and the home are exempt from liability for debts, and I’ve left them out; but the other properties you’ll find listed here.”

And he threw down on the desk a folded document in a legal wrapper.

“The family,” said Jim gravely, “must be told of the condition of things. It is a hard thing to do, but it must be done. Then conveyances must be obtained of all the property, subject to debts; and we must take the property and pay the debts. That also will be a hard thing to do—in several ways; but it must be done. It must be done—do you all agree?”

“Let me first ask,” said Mr. Cornish, turning to Mr. Hinckley, “how long would it be before there would have to be trouble on this paper?”

“It couldn’t possibly be postponed more than sixty days,” was the answer.

“Is there any prospect,” Cornish went on, addressing Mr. Elkins, “of closing out the railway properties within sixty days?”

“A prospect, yes,” said Jim.

“Anything like a certainty?”

“No, not in sixty days.”

“Then,” said Cornish reluctantly, “there seems to be no way out of it, and I agree. But I feel as if I were being held up, and I assent on this ground only: that Halliday and Pendleton will never deal on equal terms with a set of financial cripples, and that any trouble here will seal the fate of the railway transaction. But, lest this be taken as a precedent, I wish it to be understood that I’m not jeopardizing my fortune, or any part of it, out of any sentimental consideration for these supposed claims of any one who holds Lattimore paper, in the East or elsewhere!”

Jim sat drumming on the desk.

“As we are all agreed on what to do,” said he drawlingly, “we can skip the question why we do it. Prepare the necessary papers, Mr. Lattimore. And perhaps you are the proper person to apprise the family as to the true condition of things. We’ll have to get together to-morrow and begin to dig for the funds. I think we can do no more to-night.”

We walked down the street and dropped into the opera house in time to hear the grand finale of the last piece by the band. As the great outburst of music died away, Captain Tolliver radiantly stepped to the footlights, dividing the applause with the musicians.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said he, “puhmit me to say, in bidding you-all good-night, that I congratulate the republic on the possession of a citizenship so awake to theiah true interests as you have shown you’selves to-day! I congratulate the puhchasers of propahty in the Herald Addition upon the bahgains they have secuahed. Only five minutes’ walk from the cyahs, and well within the three-mile limit, the time must soon come when these lots will be covahed with the mansions of ouah richah citizens. Even since the sales of this afternoon, I am infawmed that many of the pieces have been resold at an advance, netting the puhchasers a nice profit without putting up a cent. Upon all this I congratulate you. Lattimore, ladies and gentlemen, has nevah been cuhsed by a boom, and I pray God she nevah may! This rathah brisk growth of ouahs, based as it is on crying needs of ouah trade territory, is really unaccountably slow, all things considered. But I may say right hyah that things ah known to be in sto’ foh us which will soon give ouah city an impetus which will cyahy us fo’ward by leaps and bounds—by leaps and bounds, ladies and gentlemen—to that highah and still mo’ commandin’ place in the galaxy of American cities which is ouahs by right! And now as you-all take youah leave, I propose that we rise and give three cheers fo’ Lattimore and prosperity.”

The cheers were given thunderously, and the crowd bustled out, filling the street.

“Well, wouldn’t that jar you!” said Jim. “This is a case of ‘Gaze first upon this picture, then on that’ sure enough, isn’t it, Al?”

Captain Tolliver joined us, so full of excitement of the evening that he forgot to give Mr. Elkins the greeting his return otherwise would have evoked.

“Gentlemen,” said he, “it was glorious! Nevah until this moment have I felt true fawgiveness in my breast faw the crime of Appomattox! But to-night we ah truly a reunited people!”

“Glad to know it,” said Jim, “mighty glad, Captain. The news’ll send stocks up a-whooping, if it gets to New York!”

CHAPTER XX.

I Twice Explain the Condition of the Trescott Estate.

Nothing had remained unchanged in Lattimore, and our old offices in the First National Bank edifice had long since been vacated by us. The very building had been demolished, and another and many-storied structure stood in its place. Now we were in the big Grain Belt Trust Company’s building, the ground-floor of which was shared between the Trust Company and the general offices of the Lattimore and Great Western. In one corner, and next to the private room of President Elkins, was the office of Barslow & Elkins, where I commanded. Into which entered Mrs. Trescott and her daughter one day, soon after Mr. Lattimore had been given his instructions concerning the offer of our syndicate to pay the debts of their estate and take over its properties.

“Josie and I have called,” said the widow, “to talk with you about the estate matters. Mr. Lattimore came to see us last night and—told us.”

She seemed a little agitated, but in nowise so much cast down as might be expected of one who, considering herself rich, learns that she is poor. She had in her manner that mixture of dignity and constraint which marks the bearing of people whose relations with their friends have been affected by some great grief. A calamity not only changes our own feelings, but it makes us uncertain as to what our friends expect of us.

“What we wish explained,” said Josie, “is just how it comes that our property must be deeded away.”

“I can see,” said I, “that that is a matter which demands investigation on your part. Your request is a natural and a proper one.”

“It is not that,” said she, evidently objecting to the word investigation; “we are not so very much surprised, and we have no doubt as to the necessity of doing it. But we want to know as much as possible about it before we act.”

“Quite right,” said I. “Mr. Elkins is in the next office; let us call him in. He sees and can explain these things as clearly as any one.”

Jim came in response to a summons by one of his clerks. He shook hands gravely with my visitors.

“We are told,” said Mrs. Trescott, “that our debts are a good deal more than we can pay—that we really have nothing.”

“Not quite that,” said Jim; “the law gives to the widow the home and the life insurance. That is a good deal more than nothing.”

“As to whether we can keep that,” said Josie, “we are not discussing now; but there are some other things we should like cleared up.”

“We don’t understand Mr. Cornish’s offer to take the property and pay the debts,” said Mrs. Trescott.

Jim’s glance sought mine in a momentary and questioning astonishment; then he calmly returned the widow’s look. Josie’s eyes were turned toward the carpet, and a slight blush tinged her cheeks.

“Ah,” said Jim, “yes; Mr. Cornish’s offer. How did you learn of it?”

“I got my understanding of it from Mr. Lattimore,” said Mrs. Trescott, “and told Josie about it.”

“Before we consent to carry out this plan,” said Josie, “we ... I want to know all about the motives and considerations back of it. I want to know whether it is based on purely business considerations, or on some fancied obligation ... or ... or ... on merely friendly sentiments.”

“As to motives,” said Mr. Elkins, “if the purely business requirements of the situation fully account for the proposition, we may waive the discussion of motives, can’t we, Josie?”

“I imagine,” said Mrs. Trescott, finding that Jim’s question remained unanswered, “that none of us will claim to be able to judge Mr. Cornish’s motives.”

“Certainly not,” acquiesced Mr. Elkins. “None of us.”

“This is not what we came to ask about,” said Josie. “Please tell us whether our house and the insurance money would be mamma’s if this plan were not adopted—if the courts went on and settled the estate in the usual way?”

“Yes,” said I, “the law gives her that, and justly. For the creditors knew all about the law when they took those bonds. So you need have no qualms of conscience on that.”

“As none of it belongs to me,” said Josie, “I shall leave all that to mamma. I avoid the necessity of settling it by ceasing to be ‘the richest heiress in this part of the West’—one of the uses of adversity. But to proceed. Mamma says that there is a corporation, or something, forming to pay our debts and take our property, and that it will take a hundred thousand dollars more to pay the debts than the estate is worth. I must understand why this corporation should do this. I can see that it will save pa’s good name in the business world, and save us from public bankruptcy; but ought we to be saved these things at such a cost? And can we permit—a corporation—or any one, to do this for us?”

Mr. Elkins nodded to me to speak.

“My dear,” said I, “it’s another illustration of the truth that no man liveth unto himself alone—”

She shrank, as if she feared some fresh hurt was about to be touched, and I saw that it was the second part of the text the anticipation of which gave her pain. Quotation is sometimes ill for a green wound.

“The fact is,” I went on, “that things in Lattimore are not in condition to bear a shock—general money conditions, I mean, you know.”

“I know,” she said, nodding assent; “I can see that.”

“Your father did a very large business for a time,” I continued; “and when he sold lands he took some cash in payment, and for the balance notes of the various purchasers, secured by mortgages on the properties. Many of these persons are mere adventurers, who bought on speculation, and when their first notes came due failed to pay. Now if you had these notes, you could hold them, or foreclose the mortgages, and, beyond being disappointed in getting the money, no harm would be done.”

“I understand,” said Josie. “I knew something of this before.”

“But if we haven’t the notes,” inquired her mother, “where are they?”

“Well,” I went on, “you know how we have all handled these matters here. Mr. Trescott did as we all did: he negotiated them. The Grain Belt Trust Company placed them for him, and his are the only securities it has handled except those of our syndicate. He took them to the Trust Company and signed them on the back, and thus promised to pay them if the first signer failed. Then the trust company attached its guaranty to them, and they were resold all over the East, wherever people had money to put out at interest.”

“I see,” said Josie; “we have already had the money on these notes.”

“Yes,” said I, “and now we find that a great many of these notes, which are being sent on for payment, will not be paid. Your father’s estate is not able to pay them, and our trust company must either take them up or fail. If it fails, everyone will think that values in Lattimore are unstable and fictitious, and so many people will try to sell out that we shall have a smashing of values, and possibly a panic. Prices will drop, so that none of our mortgages will be good for their face. Thousands of people will be broken, the city will be ruined, and there will be hard and distressful times, both here and where our paper is held. But if we can keep things as they are until we can do some large things we have in view, we are not afraid of anything serious happening. So we form this new corporation, and have it advance the funds on the notes, so as not to weaken the trust company—and because we can’t afford to do it otherwise—and we know you would not permit it anyhow; and we ask you to give to the new corporation all the property which the creditors could reach, which will be held, and sold as opportunity offers, so as to make the loss as small as possible. But we must keep off this panic to save ourselves.”

“I must think about this,” said Josie. “I don’t see any way out of it; but to have one’s affairs so wrapped up in such a great tangle that one loses control of them seems wrong, somehow. And so far as I am concerned, I think I should prefer to turn everything over to the creditors—house and all—than to have even so good friends as yourself take on such a load for us. It seems as if we were saying to you, ‘Pay our debts or we’ll ruin you!’ I must think about it.”

“You understand it now?” said Jim.

“Yes, in a way.”

“Let me come over this evening,” said he, “and I think I can remove this feeling from your mind. And by the way, the new corporation is not going to have the ranch out on the Cheyenne Range. The syndicate says it isn’t worth anything. And I’m going to take it. I still believe in the headwaters of Bitter Creek as an art country.”

“Thank you,” said she vaguely.

Somehow, the explanation of the estate affairs seemed to hurt her. Her color was still high, but her eyes were suffused, her voice grew choked at times, and she showed the distress of her recent trials, in something like a loss of self-control. Her pretty head and slender figure, the flexile white hands clasped together in nervous strain to discuss these so vital matters, and, more than all, the departure from her habitual cool and self-possessed manner, was touching, and appealed powerfully to Jim. He walked up to her, as she stood ready to leave, and laid his hand lightly on her arm.

“The way Barslow puts these property matters,” said he, “you are called upon to think that all arrangements have been made upon a cold cash basis; and, actually, that’s the fact. But you mustn’t either of you think that in dealing with you we have forgotten that you are dear to us—friends. We should have had to act in the same way if you had been enemies, perhaps, but if there had been any way in which our—regard could have shown itself, that way would have been followed.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Trescott, “we understand that. Mr. Lattimore said almost the same thing, and we know that in what he did Mr. Cornish—”

“We must go now, mamma,” said Josie. “Thank you both very much. It won’t do any harm for me to take a day or so for considering this in all its phases; but I know now what I shall do. The thought of the distress that might come to people here and elsewhere as a result of these mistakes here is a new one, and a little big for me, at first.”

Jim sat by the desk, after they went away, folding insurance blotters and savagely tearing them in pieces.

“I wish to God,” said he, “that I could throw my hand into the deck and quit!”

“What’s the matter?” said I.

“Oh—nothing,” he returned. “Only, look at the situation. She comes in, filled with the idea that it was Cornish who proposed this plan, and that he did it for her sake. I couldn’t very well say, like a boy, ‘’Twasn’t Cornish; ’twas me!’, could I? And in showing her the purely mercenary character of the deal, I’m put in the position of backcapping Cornish, and she goes away with that impression! Oh, Al, what’s the good of being able to convince and control every one else, if you are always further off than Kamschatka with the only one for whose feelings you really care?”

“I don’t think it struck her in that way at all,” said I. “She could see how it was, and did, whatever her mother may think. But what possessed Lattimore to tell Mrs. Trescott that Cornish story?”

“Oh, Lattimore never said anything like that!” he returned disgustedly. “He told her that it was proposed by a friend, or one of the syndicate, or something like that; and they are so saturated with the Cornish idea up there lately, that they filled up the blank out of their own minds. Another mighty encouraging symptom, isn’t it?”

Not more than a day or two after this, and after the news of the “purchase” of the Trescott estate was being whispered about, my telephone rang, just before my time for leaving the office, and, on answering, I found that Antonia was at the other end of the wire.

“Is this Mr. Barslow?” said she. “How do you do? Alice is with us this afternoon, and she and mamma have given me authority to bring you home to dinner with us. Do you surrender?”

“Always,” said I, “at such a summons.”

“Then I’ll come for you in ten minutes, if you’ll wait for me. It’s ever so good of you.”

From her way of finishing the conversation, I knew she was coming to the office. So I waited in pleasurable anticipation of her coming, thinking of the perversity of the scheme of things which turned the eyes of both Jim and Cornish to Josie, while this girl coming to fetch me yearned so strongly toward one of them that her sorrow—borne lightly and cheerfully as it was—was an open secret. When she came she made her way past the clerks in the first room and into my private den. Not until the door closed behind her, and we were alone, did I see that she was not in her usual spirits. Then I saw that unmistakable quiver in her lips, so like a smile, so far from mirth, which my acquaintance with the girl, so sensitive and free from secretiveness, had made me familiar with.

“I want to know about some things,” said she, “that papa hints about in a blind sort of a way, but doesn’t tell clearly. Is it true that Josie and her mother are poor?”

“That is something which ought not to be known yet,” said I, “but it is true.”

“Oh,” said she tearfully, “I am so sorry, so sorry!”

“Antonia,” said I, as she hastily brushed her eyes, “these tears do your kind heart credit!”

“Oh, don’t, don’t talk to me like that!” she exclaimed passionately. “My kind heart! Why, sometimes I hate her; and I would be glad if she was out of the world! Don’t look like that at me! And don’t pretend to be surprised, or say you don’t understand me. I think every one understands me, and has for a long time. I think everybody on the street says, after I pass, ‘Poor Antonia!’ I must talk to somebody! And I’d rather talk to you because, even though you are a man and can’t possibly know how I feel, you understand him better than any one else I know—and you love him too!”

I started to say something, but the situation did not lend itself to words. Neither could I pat her on the shoulders, or press her hand, as I might have done with a man. Pale and beautiful, her jaunty hat a little awry, her blonde ringlets in some disorder, she sat unapproachable in her grief.

“You look at me,” said she, with a little gasping laugh, “as if I were a drowning girl, and you chained to the bank. If you haven’t pitied me in the past, Albert, don’t pity me now; for the mere saying openly to some human being that I love him seems almost to make me happy!”

I lamely murmured some inanity, of which she took not the slightest notice.

“Is it true,” she asked, “that Mr. Elkins is to pay their debts, and that they are to be—married?”

“No,” said I, glad, for some reason which is not very clear, to find something to deny. “Nothing of the sort, I assure you.”

And again, this time something wearily, for it was the second time over it in so short a time, I explained the disposition of the Trescott estate.

“But he urged it?” she said. “He insisted upon it?”

“Yes.”

She arose, buttoned her jacket about her, and stood quietly as if to test her mastery of herself, once or twice moving as if to speak, but stopping short, with a long, quivering sigh. I longed to take her in my arms and comfort her; for, in a way, she attracted me strongly.

“Mr. Barslow,” said she at last, “I have no apology to make to you; for you are my friend. And I have no feeling toward Mr. Elkins of which, in my secret heart, and so long as he knows nothing of it, I am not proud. To know him ... and love him may be death ... but it is honor!... I am sorry Josie is poor, because it is a hard thing for her; but more because I know he will be drawn to her in a stronger way by her poverty. Shake hands with me, Albert, and be jolly, I’m jollier, away down deep, than I’ve been for a long, long time; and I thank you for that!”

We shook hands warmly, like comrades, and passed down to her carriage together. At dinner she was vivacious as ever; but I was downcast. So much so that Mrs. Hinckley devoted herself to me, cheering me with a dissertation on “Sex in Mind.” I asked myself if the atmosphere in which she had been reared had not in some degree contributed to the attitude of Antonia toward the expression to me of her regard for Jim.

So the Trescott estate matter was arranged. In a few days the boom was strengthened by newspaper stories of the purchase, by heavy financial interests, of the entire list of assets in the hands of the administrator.

“This immense deal,” said the Herald, “is new proof of the desirability of Lattimore property. The Acme Investment Company, which will handle the properties, has bought for investment, and will hold for increased prices. It may be taken as certain that in no other city in the country could so large and varied a list of holdings be so quickly and advantageously realized upon.”

This was cheering—to the masses. But to us it was like praise for the high color of a fever patient. Even while the rehabilitated Giddings thus lifted his voice in pæans of rejoicing, the lurid signals of danger appeared in our sky.

CHAPTER XXI.

Of Conflicts, Within and Without.

I have often wished that some sort of a business weather-chart might be periodically got out, showing conditions all over the world. It seems to me that with such a map one could forecast financial storms and squalls with an accuracy quite up to the weather-bureau standard.

Had we at Lattimore been provided with such a chart, and been reminded of the wisdom of referring to it occasionally, we might have saved ourselves some surprises. We should have known of certain areas of speculative high pressure in Australasia, Argentina, and South Africa, which existed even prior to my meeting with Jim that day in the Pullman smoking-room coming out of Chicago. These we should have seen changing month by month, until at the time when we were most gloriously carrying things before us in Lattimore, each of these spots on the other side of the little old world showed financial disturbances—pronounced “lows.” We should have seen symptoms of storm on the European bourses; and we should have thought of the natural progress of the moving areas, and derived much benefit from such consideration. We should certainly have paid some attention to it, if we could have seen the black isobars drawn about London, when the great banking house of Fleischmann Brothers went down in the wreck of their South African and Argentine investments. But having no such chart, and being much engrossed in the game against the World and Destiny, we glanced for a moment at the dispatches, seeing nothing in them of interest to us, congratulated ourselves that we were not as other investors and speculators, and played on.

Once in a while we found some over-cautious banker or broker who had inexplicable fears for the future.

“Here is an idiot,” said Cornish, while we were placing the paper to float the Trescott deal, “who is calling his loans; and why, do you think?”

“Can’t guess,” said Jim, “unless he needs the money. How does he account for it?”

“Read his letter,” said Cornish. “Says the Fleischmann failure in London is making his directors cautious. I’m calling his attention to the now prevailing sun-spots, as bearing on Lattimore property.”

Mr. Elkins read the letter carefully, turned it over, and read it again.

“Don’t,” said he; “he may be one of those asses who fail to see the business value of the reductio ad absurdum.... Fellows, we must push this L. & G. W. business with Pendleton. Some of us ought to be down there now.”

“That is wise counsel,” I agreed, “and you’re the man.”

“No,” said he positively, “I’m not the man. Cornish, can’t you go, starting, say, to-morrow?”

“No indeed,” said Cornish with equal positiveness; “since my turn-down by Wade on that bond deal, I’m out of touch with the lower Broadway and Wall Street element. It seems clear to me that you are the only one to carry this negotiation forward.”

“I can’t go, absolutely,” insisted Jim. “Al, it seems to be up to you.”

I knew that Jim ought to do this work, and could not understand the reasons for both himself and Cornish declining the mission. Privately, I told him that it was nonsense to send me; but he found reasons in plenty for the course he had determined upon. He had better control of the hot air, he said, but as a matter of fact I was more in Pendleton’s class than he was, I was more careful in my statements, and I saw further into men’s minds.

“And if, as you say,” said he, “Pendleton thinks me the whole works here, it will show a self-possession and freedom from anxiety on our part to accredit a subordinate (as you call yourself) as envoy to the court of St. Scads. Again, affairs here are likely to need me at any time; and if we go wrong here, it’s all off. I don’t dare leave. Anyhow, down deep in your subconsciousness, you know that in diplomacy you really have us all beaten to a pulp: and this is a matter as purely diplomatic as draw-poker. You’ll do all right.”

My wife was skeptical as to the necessity of my going.

“Why doesn’t Mr. Cornish go, then?” she inquired, after I had explained to her the position of Mr. Elkins. “He is a native of Wall Street, I believe.”

“Well,” I repeated, “they both say positively that they can’t go.”

“Your natural specialty may be diplomacy,” said she pityingly, “but if you take the reasons they give as the real ones, I must be permitted to doubt it. It’s perfectly obvious that if Josie were transferred to New York, the demands of business would take them both there at once.”

This remark struck me as very subtle, and as having a good deal in it. Josie had never permitted the rivalry between Jim and Cornish to become publicly apparent; but in spite of the mourning which kept the Trescott’s in semi-retirement, it was daily growing more keen. Elkins was plainly anxious at the progress Cornish had seemed to make during his last long absence, and still doubtful of his relations with Josie after that utterance over her father’s body. But he was not one to give up, and so, whenever she came over for an evening with Alice, Jim was sure to drop in casually and see us. I believe Alice telephoned him. On the other hand, Cornish was calling at the Trescott house with increasing frequency. Mrs. Trescott was decidedly favorable to him, Alice a pronounced partisan of Elkins; and Josie vibrated between the two oppositely charged atmospheres, calmly non-committal, and apparently pleased with both. But the affair was affecting our relations. There was a new feeling, still unexpressed, of strain and stress, in spite of the familiarity and comradeship of long and intimate intercourse. Moreover, I felt that Mr. Hinckley was not on the same terms with Jim as formerly, and I wondered if he was possessed of Antonia’s secret.

It was with a prevision of something out of the ordinary, therefore, that I received through Alice a request from Josie for a private interview with me. She would come to us at any time when I would telephone that I was at home and would see her. Of course I at once decided I would go to her. Which, that evening, my last in Lattimore before starting for the East, I did.

There was a side door to my house, and a corresponding one in the Trescott home across the street. We were all quite in the habit, in our constant visiting between the households, of making a short cut by crossing the road from one of these doors to the other. This I did that evening, rapped at the door, and imagining I heard a voice bid me come in, opened it, and stepping into the library, found no one. The door between the library and the front hall stood open, and through it I heard the voice of Miss Trescott and the clear, carrying tones of Mr. Cornish, in low but earnest conversation.

“Yes,” I heard him say, “perhaps. And if I am, haven’t I abundant reason?”

“I have told you often,” said she pleadingly, “that I would give you a definite answer whenever you definitely demand it—”

“And that it would in that case be ‘No,’” he added, completing the sentence. “Oh, Josie, my darling, haven’t you punished me enough for my bad conduct toward you in that old time? I was a young fool, and you a strange country girl; but as soon as you left us, I began to feel your sweetness. And I was seeking for you everywhere I went until I found you that night up there by the lake. Does that seem like slighting you? Why, I hope you don’t deem me capable of being satisfied in this hole Lattimore, under any circumstances, if it hadn’t been for the hope and comfort your being here has given me!”

“I thought we were to say no more about that old time,” said she; “I thought the doings of Johnny Cornish were not to be remembered by or of Bedford.”

“The name I’ve asked you to call me by!” said he passionately. “Does that mean—”

“It means nothing,” said she. “Oh, please, please!—Good-night!”

I retired to the porch, and rapped again. She came to the door blushing redly, and so fluttered by their leave-taking that I thanked God that Jim was not in my place. There would have been division in our ranks at once; for it seemed to me that her conduct to Cornish was too complaisant by far.

“I came over,” said I, “because Alice said you wanted to see me.”

I think there must have been in my tone something of the reproach in my thoughts; for she timidly said she was sorry to have given me so much trouble.

“Oh, don’t, Josie!” said I. “You know I’d not miss the chance of doing you a favor for anything. Tell me what it is, my dear girl, and don’t speak of trouble.”

“If you forbid reference to trouble,” said she, smiling, “it will stop this conference. For my troubles are what I want to talk to you about. May I go on?—You see, our financial condition is awfully queer. Mamma has some money, but not much. And we have this big house. It’s absurd for us to live in it, and I want to ask you first, can you sell it for us?”

It was doubtful, I told her. A year or so ago, I went on, it would have been easy; but somehow the market for fine houses was dull now. We would try, though, and hoped to succeed. We talked at length, and I took copious memoranda for my clerks.

“There is another thing,” said she when we had finished the subject of the house, “upon which I want light, something upon which depends my staying here or going away. You know General Lattimore and I are friends, and that I place great trust in his conclusions. He says that the most terrible hard times here would result from anything happening to your syndicate. You have said almost the same thing once or twice, and the other day you said something about great operations which you have in view which will, somehow, do away with any danger of that kind. Is it true that you would all be—ruined by a—breaking up—or anything of that sort?”

“Just now,” I confessed, “such a thing would be dangerous; but I hope we shall soon be past all that.”

I told her, as well as I could, about our hopes, and of my mission to New York.

“You must suspect,” said she, “that my presence here is danger to your harmony; and through you, to all these people whose names even we have never heard. Shall I go away? I can go almost anywhere with mamma, and we can get along nicely. Now that pa is gone, my work here is over, and I want to get into the world.”

I thought of the parallelism between her discontent and the speech Mr. Cornish had made, referring so contemptuously to Lattimore. I began to see the many things in common between them, and I grew anxious for Jim.

“Of all things,” said she, “I want to avoid the rôle of Helen setting a city in flames. It would be so absurd—and so terrible; and rather than do such a hackneyed and harmful thing, I want to go away.”

“Do you really mean that?” I asked, “Haven’t you a desire to make your choice, and stay?”

“You mustn’t ask that question, Albert,” said she. “The answer is a secret—from every one. But I will say—that if you succeed in this mission, so as to put people here quite out of danger—I may not go away—not for some time!”

She was blushing again, just as she blushed when she admitted me. I thought once more of the fluttering cry, “Oh, please—please!” and the pause before she added the good-night, and my jealousy for Jim rose again.

“Well,” said I, rising, “all I can say is that I hope all will be safe when I return, and that you will find it quite possible to—remain. My advice is: do nothing looking toward leaving until I return.”

“Don’t be cross with me, Mr. Barslow,” said she, “for really, really—I am in great perplexity.”

“I am not cross,” said I, “but don’t you see how hard it is for me to advise? Things conflict so, and all among your friends!”

“They do conflict,” she assented, “they do conflict, every way, and all the time—and do, do give me a little credit for keeping the conflict from getting beyond control for so long; for there are conflicts within, as well as without! Don’t blame Helen altogether, or me, whatever happens!”

She hung on my arm, as she took me to the door, and seemed deeply troubled. I left her, and walked several times around the block, ruminating upon the extraordinary way in which these dissolving views of passion were displaying themselves to me. Not that the mere matter of outburst of confidences surprised me; for people all my life have bored me with their secret woes. I think it is because I early formed a habit of looking sympathetic. But these concerned me so nearly that their gradual focussing to some sort of climax filled me with anxious interest.

The next day I spent in the sleeping-car, running into Chicago. As the clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack of the wheels vibrated through my couch, I pondered on the ridiculous position of that cautious Eastern bank as to the Fleischmann Brothers’ failure; then on the Lattimore & Great Western and Belt Line sale; and finally worked around through the Straits of Sunda, in a suspicious lateen-rigged craft manned by Malays and Portuguese. Finally, I was horrified at discovering Cornish, in a slashed doublet, carrying Josie away in one of the boats, having scuttled the vessel and left Jim bound to the mast.

“Chicago in fifteen minutes, suh,” said the porter, at this critical point. “Just in time to dress, suh.”

And as I awoke, my approach toward New York brought to me a sickening consciousness of the struggle which awaited me there, and the fatal results of failure.

CHAPTER XXII.

In which I Win my Great Victory.

My plan was our old one—to see both Pendleton and Halliday, and, if possible, to allow both to know of the fact that we had two strings to our bow, playing the one off against the other. Whether or not there was any likelihood of this course doing any good was dependent on the existence of the strained personal relations, as well as the business rivalry, generally supposed to prevail between the two Titans of the highways. As conditions have since become, plans like mine are quite sure to come to naught; but in those days the community of interests in the railway world had not reached its present perfection of organization. Men like Pendleton and Halliday were preparing the way for it, but the personal equation was then a powerful factor in the problem, and these builders of their own systems still carried on their private wars with their own forces. In such a war our properties were important.

The Lattimore & Great Western with the Belt Line terminals would make the Pendleton system dominant in Lattimore. In the possession of Halliday it would render him the arbiter of the city’s fortunes, and would cut off from his rival’s lines the rich business from this feeder. Both men were playing with the patience of Muscovite diplomacy the old and tried game of permitting the little road to run until it got into difficulties, and then swooping down upon it; but either, we thought, and especially Pendleton, would pay full value for the properties rather than see them fall into his opponent’s net.

I wired Pendleton’s office from home that I was coming. At Chicago I received from his private secretary a telegram reading: “Mr. Pendleton will see you at any time after the 9th inst. Smith.”

We had been having some correspondence with Mr. Halliday’s office on matters of disputed switching and trackage dues. The controversy had gone up from subordinate to subordinate to the fountain of power itself. A contract had been sent on for examination, embodying a modus vivendi governing future relations. I had wired notice of my coming to him also, and his answer, which lay alongside Pendleton’s in the same box, was evidently based on the supposition that it was this contract which was bringing me East, and was worded so as to relieve me of the journey if possible.

“Will be in New York on evening of 11th,” it read, “not before. With slight modifications, contract submitted as to L. & G. W. and Belt Line matter will be executed. Halliday.”

I spent no time in Chicago, but pushed on, in the respectable isolation of a through sleeper on a limited train. Once in a while I went forward into the day coach, to give myself the experience of the complete change in the social atmosphere. On arrival, I began killing time by running down every scrap of our business in New York. My gorge rose at all forms of amusement; but I had a sensation of doing something while on the cars, and went to Boston, and down to Philadelphia, all the time feeling the pulse of business. There was a lack of that confident hopefulness which greeted us on our former visits. I heard the Fleischmann failure spoken of rather frequently. One or two financial establishments on this side of the water were looked at askance because of their supposed connections with the Fleischmanns. Mr. Wade, in hushed tones, advised me to prepare for some little stringency after the holidays.

“Nothing serious, you know, Mr. Borlish,” said he, still paying his mnemonic tribute to the other names of our syndicate; “nothing to be spoken of as hard times; and as for panic, the financial world is too well organized for that ever to happen again! But a little tightening of things, Mr. Cornings, to sort of clear the decks for action on lines of conservatism for the year’s business.”

I talked with Mr. Smith, Mr. Pendleton’s private secretary, and with Mr. Carson, who spoke for Mr. Halliday. In fact I went over the L. & G. W. proposition pretty fully with each of them, and each office had a well-digested and succinct statement of the matter for the examination of the magnates when they came back. Once while Mr. Carson and I were on our way to take luncheon together, we met Mr. Smith, and I was glad to note the glance of marked interest which he bestowed upon us. The meeting was a piece of unexpected good fortune.

On the 10th I had my audience with Mr. Pendleton. He had the typewritten statement of the proposition before him, and was ready to discuss it with his usual incisiveness.

“I am willing to say to you, Mr. Barslow,” said he, “that we are willing to take over your line when the propitious time comes. We don’t think that now is such a time. Why not run along as we are?”

“Because we are not satisfied with the railroad business as a side line, Mr. Pendleton,” said I. “We must have more mileage or none at all, and if we begin extensions, we shall be drawn into railroading as an exclusive vocation. We prefer to close out that department, and to put in all our energies to the development of our city.”

“When must you know about this?” he asked.

“I came East to close it up, if possible,” I answered. “You are familiar with the situation, and we thought must be ready to decide.”

“Two and a quarter millions,” he objected, “is out of the question. I can’t expect my directors to view half the price with any favor. How can I?”

“Show them our earnings,” I suggested.

“Yes,” said he, “that will do very well to talk to people who can be made to forget the fact that you’ve been building a city there from a country village, and your line has been pulling in everything to build it with. The next five years will be different. Again, while I feel sure the business men of your town will still throw things our way, as they have your way—tonnage I mean—there might be a tendency to divide it up more than when your own people were working for the trade. And the next five years will be different anyhow.”

“Do you remember,” said I, “how skeptical you were as to the past five?”

“I acknowledge it,” said he, laughing. “The fact is I didn’t give you credit for being as big men as you are. But even a big man, or a big town, can reach only as high as it can. But we can’t settle that question. I shouldn’t expect a Lattimore boomer ever to adopt my view of it. I shall give this matter some attention to-day, and while I feel sure we are too far apart ever to come together, come in in the morning, and we will look at it again.”

“I hope we may come together,” said I, rising; “we built the line to bring you into Lattimore, and we want to keep you there. It has made our town, and we prize the connection highly.”

“Ah, yes,” he answered, countering. “Well, we are spread out a good deal now, you know; and some of our directors look with suspicion upon your sudden growth, and would not feel sorry to withdraw. I don’t agree with ’em, you know, but I must defer to others sometimes. Good-morning.”

I passed the evening with Carson at the theatre, and supped with him afterward. He gave me every opportunity to indulge in champagne, and evinced a desire to know all about business conditions in Lattimore, and the affairs of the L. & G. W. I suspected that the former fact had some connection with the latter. I went to my hotel, however, in my usual state of ebriety, while Mr. Carson had attained a degree of friendliness toward me bordering on affection, as a direct result of setting the pace in the consumption of wine. I listened patiently to his complaints of Halliday’s ungratefulness toward him in not giving him the General Managership of one of the associated roads; but when he began to confide to me the various pathological conditions of his family, including Mrs. Carson, I drew the line, and broke up the party. I retired, feeling a little resentful toward Carson. His device seemed rather cheap to try on a full-grown man. Yet his entertainment had been undeniably good.

Next morning I was admitted to the presence of the great man with less than half an hour’s delay. He turned to me, and plunged at once into the midst of the subject. Evidently some old misunderstanding of the question came up in his mind by association of ideas, as a rejected paper will be drawn with its related files from a pigeon-hole.

“That terminal charge,” said he, “has not counted for much against the success of your road, yet; but the contract provides for increasing rentals, and it is already too much. The trackage and depots aren’t worth it. It will be a millstone about your necks!”

“Well,” said I, “you can understand the reason for making the rentals high. We had to show revenue for the Belt Line system in order to float the bonds, but the rentals become of no consequence when once you own both properties—and that’s our proposal to you.”

“Oh, yes!” said he, and at once changed the subject.

This was the only instance, in all my observation of him, in which he forgot anything, or failed correctly to see the very core of the situation. I felt somehow elated at being for a moment his superior in any respect.

We began discussing rates and tonnage, and he sent for his freight expert again. I took from my pocket some letters and telegrams and made computations on the backs of them. Some of these figures he wanted to keep for further reference.

“Please let me have those figures until this afternoon,” said he. “I must ask you to excuse me now. At two I’ll give the matter another half-hour. Come back, Mr. Barslow, prepared to name a reasonable sum, and I will accept or reject, and finish the matter.”

I left the envelopes on his desk and went out. At the hotel I sat down to think out my program and began arranging things for my departure. Was it the 11th or the 12th that Mr. Halliday was to return? I would look at his message. I turned over all my telegrams, but it was gone.

Then I thought. That was the telegram I had left with Pendleton! Would he suspect that I had left it as a trick, and resent the act? No, this was scarcely likely, for he himself had asked for it. Suddenly the construction of which it was susceptible flashed into my mind. “With slight modifications contract submitted as to L. & G. W. and Belt Line matter will be executed. Halliday.”

I was feverish until two o’clock; for I could not guess the effect of this telegram, should it be read by Pendleton. I found him impassive and keen-eyed, and I waited longer than usual for that aquiline swoop of his, as he turned in his revolving chair. I felt sure then that he had not read the message. I think differently now.

“Well, Mr. Barslow,” said he smilingly, “how far down in the millions are we to-day?”

“Mr. Pendleton,” I replied, steady as to tone, but with a quiver in my legs, “I can say nothing less than an even two millions.”

“It’s too much,” said he cheerfully, and my heart sank, “but I like Lattimore, and you men who live there, and I want to stay in the town. I’ll have the legal department prepare a contract covering the whole matter of transfers and future relations, and providing for the price you mention. You can submit it to your people, and in a short time I shall be in Chicago, and, if convenient to you, we can meet there and close the transaction. As a matter of form, I shall submit it to our directors; but you may consider it settled, I think.”

“One of our number,” said I, as calmly as if a two-million-dollar transaction were common at Lattimore, “can meet you in Chicago at any time. When will this contract be drawn?”

“Call to-morrow morning—say at ten. Show them in,” this last to his clerk, “Good-morning, Mr. Barslow.”

One doesn’t get as hilarious over a victory won alone as when he goes over the ramparts touching elbows with his charging fellows. The hurrah is a collective interjection. So I went in a sober frame of mind and telegraphed Jim and Alice of my success, cautioning my wife to say nothing about it. Then I wandered about New York, contrasting my way of rejoicing with the demonstration when we three had financed the Lattimore & Great Western bonds. I went to a vaudeville show and afterward walked miles and miles through the mysteries of the night in that wilderness. I was unutterably alone. The strain of my solitary mission in the great city was telling upon me.

“Telegram for you, Mr. Barslow,” said the night clerk, as I applied for my key.

It was a long message from Jim, and in cipher. I slowly deciphered it, my initial anxiety growing, as I progressed, to an agony.

“Come home at once,” it read. “Cornish deserting. Must take care of the hound’s interest somehow. Threatens litigation. A hold-up, but he has the drop. Am in doubt whether to shoot him now or later. Stop at Chicago, and bring Harper. Bring him, understand? Unless Pendleton deal is made, this means worse things than we ever dreamed of; but don’t wait. Leave Pendleton for later, and come home. If I follow my inclinations, you will find me in jail for murder. Elkins.”

All night I sat, turning this over in my mind. Was it ruin, or would my success here carry us through? Without a moment’s sleep I ate my breakfast, braced myself with coffee, engaged a berth for the return journey, and promptly presented myself at Pendleton’s office at ten. Wearily we went over the precious contract, and I took my copy and left.

All that day I rode in a sort of trance, in which I could see before my eyes the forms of the hosts of those whom Jim had called “the captives below decks,” whose fortunes were dependent upon whether we striving, foolish, scheming, passionate men went to the wall. A hundred times I read in Jim’s telegram the acuteness of our crisis; and a sense of our danger swept dauntingly over my spirit. A hundred times I wished that I might awake and find that the whole thing—Aladdin and his ring, the palaces, gnomes, genies, and all—could pass away like a tale that is told, and leave me back in the rusty little town where it found me.

I slept heavily that night, and was very much much more myself when I went to see Harper in Chicago. He had received a message from Jim, and was ready to go. He also had one for me, sent in his care, and just arrived.

“You have saved the fight,” said the message; “your success came just as they were counting nine on us. With what you have done we can beat the game yet. Bring Harper, and come on.”

Harper, cool and collected, big and blonde, with a hail-fellow-well-met manner which spoke eloquently of the West, was a great comfort to me. He made light of the trouble.

“Cornish is no fool,” said he, “and he isn’t going to saw off the limb he stands on.”

I tried to take this view of it; but I knew, as he did not, the real source of the enmity between Elkins and Cornish, and my fears returned. Business differences might be smoothed over; but with two such men, the quarrel of rivals in love meant nothing but the end of things between them.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The “Dutchman’s Mill” and What It Ground.

We sat in conclave about the table. I saw by the lined faces of Elkins and Hinckley that I had come back to a closely-beleaguered camp, where heavy watching had robbed the couch of sleep, and care pressed down the spirit. I had returned successful, but not to receive a triumph: rather, Harper and myself constituted a relief force, thrown in by stratagem, too weak to raise the siege, but bearing glad tidings of strong succor on the way.

It was our first full meeting without Cornish; and Harper sat in his place. He was unruffled and buoyant in manner, in spite of the stock in the Grain Belt Trust Company which he held, and the loans placed with his insurance company by Mr. Hinckley.

“I believe,” said he, “that we are here to consider a communication from Mr. Cornish. It seems that we ought to hear the letter.”

“I’ll read it in a minute,” said Jim, “but first let me say that this grows out of a talk between Mr. Cornish and myself. Hinckley and Barslow know that there have been differences between us here for some time.”

“Quite natural,” said Harper; “according to all the experience-tables, you ought to have had a fight somewhere in the crowd long before this.”

“Mr. Cornish,” went on Mr. Elkins, “has favored the policy of converting our holdings into cash, and letting the obligations we have floated stand solely on the assets by which they are secured. The rest of us have foreseen such rapid liquidation, as a certain result of such a policy, that not only would our town receive a blow from which it could never recover, but the investment world would suffer in the collapse.”

“I should say so,” said Harper; “we’ll have to look closely to the suicide clause in our policies held in New England, if that takes place!”

“Well,” said Jim, continuing, “last Tuesday the matter came to an issue between us, and some plain talk was indulged in; perhaps the language was a little strong on my part, and Mr. Cornish considered himself aggrieved, and said, among other things, that he, for one, would not submit to extinguishment, and he would show me that I could not go on in opposition to his wishes.”

“What did you say to that?” asked Hinckley.

“I informed him,” said Jim, “that I was from Missouri, or words to that effect; and that my own impression was, the majority of the stock in our concerns would control. My present view is that he’s showing me.”

A ghost of a smile went round at this, and Jim began reading Cornish’s letter.

“Events of the recent past convince me,” the secessionist had written, “that no good can come from the further continuance of our syndicate. I therefore propose to sell all my interest in our various properties to the other members, and to retire. Should you care to consider such a thing, I am prepared to make you an alternative offer, to buy your interests. As the purchase of three shares by one is a heavier load than the taking over of one share by three, I should expect to buy at a lower proportional price than I should be willing to sell for. As the management of our enterprises seems to have abandoned the tried principles of business, for some considerations the precise nature of which I am not acute enough to discern, and as a sale to me would balk the very benevolent purposes recently avowed by you, I assume that I shall not be called upon to make an offer.

“There is at least one person among those to whom this is addressed who knows that in beginning our operations in Lattimore it was understood that we should so manage affairs as to promote and take advantage of a bulge in values, and then pull out with a profit. Just what may be his policy when this reaches him I cannot, after my experience with his ability as a lightning change artist, venture to predict; but my last information leads me to believe that he is championing the utopian plan of running the business, not only past the bulge, but into the slump. I, for one, will not permit my fortune to be jeopardized by so palpable a piece of perfidy.

“I may be allowed to add that I am prepared to take such measures as may seem to my legal advisers best to protect my interests. I am assured that the funds of one corporation will not be permitted by the courts to be donated to the bolstering up of another, over the protest of a minority stockholder. You may confidently assume that this advice will be tested to the utmost before the acts now threatened are permitted to be actually done.

“I attach hereto a schedule of our holdings, with the amount of my interest in each, and the price I will take. I trust that I may have an answer to this at your earliest convenience. I beg to add that any great delay in answering will be taken by me as a refusal on your part to do anything, and I shall act accordingly.

“Very respectfully,
“J. Bedford Cornish.”

“Huh!” ejaculated Harper, “would he do it, d’ye think?”

“He’s a very resolute man,” said Hinckley.

“He calculates,” said Jim, “that if he begins operations, he can have receiverships and things of that kind in his interest, and in that way swipe the salvage. On the other hand, he must know that his loss would be proportioned to ours, and would be great. He’s sore, and that counts for something. I figure that the chances are seven out of ten that he’ll do it—and that’s too strong a game for us to go up against.”

“What would be the worst that could happen if he began proceedings?” said I.

“The worst,” answered Jim laconically. “I don’t say, you know,” he went on after a pause, “that Cornish hasn’t some reason for his position. From a cur’s standpoint he’s entirely right. We didn’t anticipate the big way in which things have worked out here, nor how deep our roots would strike; and we did intend to cash in when the wave came. And a cur can’t understand our position in the light of these developments. He can’t see that in view of the number of people sucked down with her when a great ship like ours sinks, nobody but a murderer would needlessly see her wrecked. What he proposes is to scuttle her. Sell to him! I’d as soon sell Vassar College to Brigham Young!”

This tragic humorousness had the double effect of showing us the dilemma, and taking the edge off the horror of it.

“If it were my case,” said Harper, “I’d call him. I don’t believe he’ll smash things; but you fellows know each other best, and I’m here to give what aid and comfort I can, and not to direct. I accept your judgment as to the danger. Now let’s do business. I’ve got to get back to Chicago by the next train, and I want to go feeling that my stock in the Grain Belt Trust Company is an asset and not a liability. Let’s do business.”

“As for going back on the next train,” said Mr. Elkins, “you’ve got another guess coming: this one was wrong. As for doing business, the first thing in my opinion is to examine the items of this bill of larceny, and see about scaling them down.”

“We might be able,” said I, “to turn over properties instead of cash, for some of it.”

Elkins appointed Harper and Hinckley to do the negotiating with Cornish. It was clear, he said, that neither he nor I was the proper person to act. They soon went out on their mission and left me with Jim.

“Do you see what a snowfall we’ve had?” he asked. “It fell deeper and deeper, until I thought it would never stop. No such sleighing for years. And funny as it may seem, it was that that brought on this crisis. Josie and I went sleighing, and the hound was furious. Next time we met he started this business going.”

I was studying the schedule, and said nothing. After a while he began talking again, in a slow manner, as if the words came lagging behind a labored train of thought.

“Remember the mill the Dutchman had?... Ground salt, and nothing but salt ... Ours won’t grind anything but mortgages ... Well, the hair of the dog must cure the bite ... Fight fire with fire ... Similia similibus curantur ... We can’t trade horses, nor methods, in the middle of the ford.... The mill has got to go on grinding mortgages until we’re carried over; and Hinckley and the Grain Belt Trust must float ’em. Of course the infernal mill ground salt until it sent the whole shooting-match to the bottom of the sea; but you mustn’t be misled by analogies. The Dutchman hadn’t any good old Al to lose telegrams in an absent-minded way where they would do the most good, and sell railroads to old man Pendleton ... As for us, it’s the time-worn case of electing between the old sheep and the lamb. We’ll take the adult mutton, and go the whole hog ... And if we lose, the tail’ll have to go with the hide.... But we won’t lose, Al, we won’t lose. There isn’t treason enough in all the storehouses of hell to balk or defeat us. It’s a question of courage and resolution and confidence, and imparting all those feelings to every one else. There isn’t malice enough, even if it were a whole pack, instead of one lone hyena, to put out the fires in those furnaces over there, or stop the wheels in that flume, or make our streets grow grass. The things we’ve built are going to stay built, and the word of Lattimore will stand!”

“My hand on that!” said I.

There was little in the way of higgling: for Cornish proudly refused much to discuss matters; and when we found what we must pay to prevent the explosion, it sickened us. Jim strongly urged upon Harper the taking of Cornish’s shares.

“No,” said Harper, “the Frugality and Indemnity is too good a thing to drop; and I can’t carry both. But if you can show me how, within a short time, you can pay it back, I’ll find you the cash you lack.”

We could not wait for the two millions from Pendleton; and the interim must be bridged over by any desperate means. We took, for the moment only, the funds advanced through Harper; and Cornish took his price.

The day after Harper went away we were busy all day long, drawing notes and mortgages. Every unincumbered piece of our property, the orts, dregs, and offcast of our operations, were made the subjects of transfers to the rag-tag and bobtail of Lattimore society. A lot worth little or nothing was conveyed to Tom, Dick, or Harry for a great nominal price, and a mortgage for from two-thirds to three-fourths of the sum given back by this straw-man purchaser. Our mill was grinding mortgages.

I do not expect that any one will say that this course was justified or justifiable; but, if anything can excuse it, the terrible difficulty of our position ought to be considered in mitigation, if not excuse. Pressed upon from without, and wounded by blows dealt in the dark from within; with dreadful failure threatening, and with brilliant success, and the averting of wide-spread calamity as the reward of only a little delay, we used the only expedient at hand, and fought the battle through. We were caught in the mighty swirl of a modern business maelstrom, and, with unreasoning reflexes, clutched at man or log indifferently, as we felt the waters rising over us; and broadcast all over the East were sown the slips of paper ground out by our mill, through the spout of the Grain Belt Trust Company; and wherever they fell they were seized upon by the banks, which had through years of experience learned to look upon our notes and bonds as good.

“Past the bulge,” quoted Jim, “and into the slump! We’ll see what the whelp says when he finds that, in spite of all his attempts to scuttle, there isn’t going to be any slump!”

By which observation it will appear that, as our operations began to bring in returns in almost their old abundance, our courage rose. At the very last, some bank failures in New York, and a bad day on ’Change in Chicago, cut off the stream, and we had to ask Harper to carry over a part of the Frugality and Indemnity loan until we could settle with Pendleton; but this was a small matter running into only five figures.

Perhaps it was because we saw only a part of the situation that our courage rose. We saw things at Lattimore with vivid clearness. But we failed to see that like centers of stress were sprinkled all over the map, from ocean to ocean; that in the mountains of the South were the Lattimores of iron, steel, coal, and the winter-resort boom; and in the central valleys were other Lattimores like ours; that among the peaks and canyons further west were the Lattimores of mines; that along the Pacific were the Lattimores of harbors and deep-water terminals; that every one of these Lattimores had in the East and in Europe its clientage of Barr-Smiths, Wickershams, and Dorrs, feeding the flames of the fever with other people’s money; and that in every village and factory, town and city, where wealth had piled up, seeking investment, were the “captives below decks,” who, in the complex machinery of this end-of-the-century life, were made or marred by the same influences which made or marred us.

The low area had swept across the seas, and now rested on us. The clouds were charged with the thunder and lightning of disaster. Almost any accidental disturbance might precipitate a crash. Had we known all this, as we now know it, the consciousness of the tragical race we were running to reach the harbor of a consummated sale to Pendleton might have paralyzed our efforts. Sometimes one may cross in the dark, on narrow footing, a chasm the abyss of which, if seen, would dizzily draw one down to destruction.

CHAPTER XXIV.

The Beginning of the End.

Court parties and court factions are always known to the populace, even down to the groom and scullions. So the defection of Cornish soon became a matter of gossip at bars, in stables, and especially about the desks of real-estate offices. Had it been a matter of armed internecine strife, the Elkins faction would have mustered an overwhelming majority; for Jim’s bluff democratic ways, and his apparent identity of fibre with the mass of the people, would have made him a popular idol, had he been a thousand times a railroad president.

While these rumors of a feud were floating about, Captain Tolliver went to Jim’s office several times, dressed with great care, and sat in silence, and in stiff and formal dignity, for a matter of five minutes or so, and then retired, with the suggestion that if there was any way in which he could serve Mr. Elkins he should be happy.

“Do you know,” said Jim to me, “that I’m afraid Hamlet’s ’bugs and goblins’ are troubling Tolliver; in other words, that he’s getting bughouse?”

“No,” said I; “while I haven’t the slightest idea what ails him, you’ll find that it’s something quite natural for him when you get a full view of his case.”

Finally, Jim, in thanking him for his proffered assistance, inquired diplomatically after the thing which weighed upon the Captain’s mind.

“I may be mistaken, suh,” said he, drawing himself up, and thrusting one hand into the tightly-buttoned breast of his black Prince Albert, “entiahly mistaken in the premises; but I have the impression that diffe’ences of a pussonal nature ah in existence between youahself and a gentleman whose name in this connection I prefuh to leave unmentioned. Such being the case, I assume that occasion may and naturally will arise foh the use of a friend, suh, who unde’stands the code—the code, suh—and is not without experience in affaiahs of honah. I recognize the fact that in cehtain exigencies nothing, by Gad, but pistols, ovah a measu’ed distance, meets the case. In such an event, suh, I shall be mo’ than happy to suhve you; mo’ than happy, by the Lord!”

“Captain,” said Jim feelingly, “you’re a good fellow and a true friend, and I promise you I shall have no other second.”

“In that promise,” replied the Captain gravely, “you confeh an honah, suh!”

After this it was thought wise to permit the papers to print the story of Cornish’s retirement; otherwise the Captain might have fomented an insurrection.

“The reasons for this step on the part of Mr. Cornish are purely personal,” said the Herald. “While retaining his feeling of interest in Lattimore, his desire to engage in certain broader fields of promotion and development in the tropics had made it seem to him necessary to lay down the work here which up to this time he has so well done. He will still remain a citizen of our city. On the other hand, while we shall not lose Mr. Cornish, we shall gain the active and powerful influence of Mr. Charles Harper, the president of the Frugality and Indemnity Life Insurance Company. It is thus that Lattimore rises constantly to higher prosperity, and wields greater and greater power. The remarkable activity lately noted in the local real-estate market, especially in the sales of unconsidered trifles of land at high prices, is to be attributed to the strengthening of conditions by these steps in the ascent of the ladder of progress.”

Cornish, however, was not without his partisans. Cecil Barr-Smith almost quarreled with Antonia because she struck Cornish off her books, Cecil insisting that he was an entirely decent chap. In this position Cecil was in accord with the clubmen of the younger sort, who had much in common with Cornish, and little with the overworked and busy railway president. Even Giddings, to me, seemed to remain unduly intimate with Cornish; but this did not affect the utterances of his paper, which still maintained what he called the policy of boost.

The behavior of Josie, however, was enigmatical. Cornish’s attentions to her redoubled, while Jim seemed dropped out of the race—and therefore my wife’s relations with Miss Trescott were subjected to a severe strain. Naturally, being a matron, and of the age of thirty-odd years, she put on some airs with her younger friend, still in the chrysalis of maidenhood. Sometimes, in a sweet sort of a way, she almost domineered over her. On this Elkins-Cornish matter, however, Josie held her at arms’ length, and refused to make her position plain; and Alice nursed that simulated resentment which one dear friend sometimes feels toward another, because of a real or imagined breach of the obligations of reciprocity.

One night, as we sat about the grate in the Trescott library, some veiled insinuations on Alice’s part caused a turning of the worm.

“If there is anything you want to say, Alice,” said Josie, “there seems to be no good reason why you shouldn’t speak out. I have asked your advice—yours and Albert’s—frequently, having really no one else to trust; and therefore I am willing to hear your reproof, if you have it for me. What is it?”

“Oh, Josie,” said I, seeking cover. “You are too sensitive. There isn’t anything, is there, Alice?”

Here I scowled violently, and shook my head at my wife; but all to no effect.

“Yes, there is,” said Alice. “We have a dear friend, the best in the world, and he has an enemy. The whole town is divided in allegiance between them, about nine on one side to one on the other—”

“Which proves nothing,” said Josie.

“And now,” Alice went on, “you, who have had every opportunity of seeing, and ought to know, that one of them is, in every look, and thought, and act, a man, while the other is—”

“A friend of mine and of my mother’s,” said Josie; “please omit the character-sketch. And remember that I refuse even to consider these business differences. Each claims to be right; and I shall judge them by other things.”

“Business differences, indeed!” scoffed Alice, albeit a little impressed by the girl’s dignity. “As if you did not know what these differences came from! But it isn’t because you remain neutral that we com—”

“You complain, Alice,” said I; “I am distinctly out of this.”

“That I complain, then,” amended Alice reproachfully. “It is because you dismiss the man and keep the—other! You may say I have no right to be heard in this, but I’m going to complain Josie Trescott, just the same!”

This seemed to approach actual conflict, and I was frightened. Had it been two men, I should have thought nothing of it, but with women such differences cut deeper than with us. Josie stepped to her writing-desk and took from it a letter.

“We may as well clear this matter up,” said she, “for it has stood between us for a long time. I think that Mr. Elkins will not feel that any confidences are violated by my showing you this—you who have been my dearest friends—”

She stopped for no reason, unless it was agitation.

“Are,” said I, “I hope, not ‘have been.’”

“Well,” said she, “read the letter, and then tell me who has been ‘dismissed.’”

I shrank from reading it; but Alice was determined to know all. It was dated the day before I left New York.

“Dear Josie,” it read, “I have told you so many times that I love you that it is an old story to you; yet I must say it once more. Until that night when we brought your father home, I was never able to understand why you would never say definitely yes or no to me; but I felt that you could not be expected to understand my feeling that the best years of our lives were wasting—you are so much younger than I—and so I hoped on. Sometimes I feared that somebody else stood in the way, and do fear it now, but that alone would have been a much simpler thing, and of that I could not complain. But on that fearful night you said something which hurt me more than anything else could, because it was an accusation of which I could not clear myself in the court of my own conscience—except so far as to say that I never dreamed of doing your father anything but good. Surely, surely you must feel this!

“Since that time, however, you have been so kind to me that I have become sure that you see that terrible tragedy as I do, and acquit me of all blame, except that of blindly setting in motion the machinery which did the awful deed. This is enough for you to forgive, God knows; but I have thought lately that you had forgiven it. You have been very kind and good to me, and your presence and influence have made me look at things in a different way from that of years ago, and I am now doing things which ought to be credited to you, so far as they are good. As for the bad, I must bear the blame myself!”

Thus far Alice had read aloud.

“Don’t, don’t,” said Josie, hiding her face. “Don’t read it aloud, please!”

“But now I am writing, not to explain anything which has taken place, but to set me right as to the future. You gave me reason to think, when we met, that I might have my answer. Things which I cannot explain have occurred, which may turn out very evilly for me, and for any one connected with me. Therefore, until this state of things passes, I shall not see you. I write this, not that I think you will care much, but that you may not believe that I have changed in my feelings toward you. If my time ever comes, and I believe it will, and that before very long, you will find me harder to dispose of without an answer than I have been in the past. I shall claim you in spite of every foe that may rise up to keep you from me. You may change, but I shall not.

“‘Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds.’

And mine will not alter. J. R. E.”

“My dear,” said Alice very humbly, “I beg your pardon. I have misjudged you. Will you forgive me?”

Josie came to take her letter, and, in lieu of other answer, stood with her arm about Alice’s waist.

“And now,” said Alice, “have you no other confidences for us?”

“No!” she cried, “no! there is nothing more! Nothing, absolutely nothing, believe me! But, now, confidence for confidence, Albert, what is this great danger? Is it anything for which any one here—for which I am to blame? Does it threaten any one else? Can’t something be done about it? Tell me, tell me!”

“I think,” said I, “that the letter was written before my telegram from New York came, and after—some great difficulties came upon us. I don’t believe he would have written it five hours later; and I don’t believe he would have written it to any one in anything but the depression of—the feeling he has for you.”

“If that is true,” said she, “why does he still avoid me? Why does he still avoid me? You have not told me all; or there is something you do not know.”

As we went home, Alice kept referring to Jim’s letter, and was as much troubled by it as was Josie.

“How do you explain it?” she asked.

“I explain it,” said I, “by ranging it with the well-known phenomenon of the love-sick youth of all lands and in every time, who revels in the thought of incurring danger or death, and heralding the fact to his loved one. Even Jim is not exempt from the feelings of the boy who rejoices in delicious tears at the thought of being found cold and dead on the doorstep of the cruel maiden of his dreams. And that letter, with a slight substratum of fact, is the result. Don’t bother about it for a moment.”

This answer may not have been completely frank, or quite expressive of my views; but I was tired of the subject. It was hardly a time to play with mammets or to tilt with lips, and it seemed that the matter might wait. There was a good deal of the pettishness of nervousness among us at that time, and I had my full share of it. Insomnia was prevalent, and gray hairs increased and multiplied. The time was drawing near for our meeting with Pendleton in Chicago. We had advices that he was coming in from the West, on his return from a long journey of inspection, and would pass over his Pacific Division. We asked him to run down to Lattimore over our road, but Smith answered that the running schedule could not be altered.

There seemed to be no reason for doubting that the proposed contract would be ratified; for the last desperate rally on our part appeared to have put a crash out of the question, for some time at least. To him that hath shall be given; and so long as we were supposed to possess power, we felt that we were safe. Yet the blow dealt by Cornish had maimed us, no matter how well we hid our hurt; and we were all too keenly conscious of the law of the hunt, by which it is the wounded buffalo which is singled out and dragged down by the wolves.

On Wednesday Jim and I were to start for Chicago, where Mr. Pendleton would be found awaiting us. On Sunday the weather, which had been cold and snowy for weeks, changed; and it blew from the southeast, raw and chill, but thawy. All day Monday the warmth increased; and the farmers coming into town reported great ponds of water dammed up in the swales and hollows against the enormous snow-drifts. Another warm day, and these waters would break through, and the streams would go free in freshets. Tuesday dawned without a trace of frost, and still the strong warm wind blew; but now it was from the east, and as I left the carriage to enter my office I was wet by a scattering fall of rain. In a few moments, as I dictated my morning’s letters, my stenographer called attention to the beating on the window of a strong and persistent downpour.

Elkins, too much engrossed in his thoughts to be able to confine himself to the details of his business, came into my office, where, sometimes sitting and sometimes walking uneasily about, he seemed to get some sort of comfort from my presence. He watched the rain, as one seeing visions.

“By morning,” said he, “there ought to be ducks in Alderson’s pond. Can’t we do our chores early and get into the blind before daylight, and lay for ’em?”

“I heard Canada geese honking overhead last night,” said I.

“What time last night?”

“Two o’clock.”

“Well, that lets us out on the Alderson’s pond project,” said he; “the boys who hunted there weren’t out walking at two. In those days they slept. It can’t be that we’re the fellows.... Why, there’s Antonia, coming in through the rain!”

“I wonder,” said I, “if la grippe isn’t taking a bad turn with her father.”

She came in, shedding the rain from her mackintosh like a water-fowl, radiant with health and the air of outdoors.

“Gentlemen,” said she gaily, “who but myself would come out in anything but a diving-suit to-day!”

“It’s almost an even thing,” said Jim, “between a calamity, which brings you, and good fortune, which keeps you away. I hope it’s only your ordinary defiance of the elements.”

“The fact is,” said she, “that it’s a very funny errand. But don’t laugh at me if it’s absurd, please. It’s about Mr. Cornish.”

“Yes!” said Jim, “what of him?”

“You know papa has been kept in by la grippe for a day or so,” she went on, “and we haven’t been allowing people to see him very much; but Mr. Cornish has been in two or three times, and every time when he went away papa was nervous and feverish. To-day, after he left, papa asked—” here she looked at Mr. Elkins, as he stood gravely regarding her, and went on with redder cheeks—“asked me some questions, which led to a long talk between us, in which I found out that he has almost persuaded papa to—to change his business connections completely.”

“Yes!” said Jim. “Change, how?”

“Why, that I didn’t quite understand,” said Antonia, “except that there was logwood and mahogany and Mexico in it, and—and that he had made papa feel very differently toward you. After what has taken place recently I knew that was wrong—you know papa is not as firm in his ideas as he used to be; and I felt that he—and you, were in danger, somehow. At first I was afraid of being laughed at—why, I’d rather you’d laugh at me than to look like that!”

“You’re a good girl, Antonia,” said Jim, “and have done the right thing, and a great favor to us. Thank you very much; and please excuse me a moment while I send a telegram. Please wait until I come back.”

“No, I’m going, Albert,” said she, when he was gone to his own office. “But first you ought to know that man told papa something—about me.”

“How do you know about this?” said I.

“Papa asked me—if I had—any complaints to make—of Mr. Elkins’s treatment of me! What do you suppose he dared to tell him?”

“What did you tell your father?” I asked.

“What could I tell him but ‘No’?” she exclaimed. “And I just had a heart-to-heart talk with papa about Mr. Cornish and the way he has acted; and if his fever hadn’t begun to run up so, I’d have got the rubber, or Peruvian-bark idea, or whatever it was, entirely out of his mind. Poor papa! It breaks my heart to see him changing so! And so I gave him a sleeping-capsule, and came down through this splendid rain; and now I’m going! But, mind, this last is a secret.”

And so she went away.

“Where’s Antonia?” asked Jim, returning.

“Gone,” said I.

“I wanted to talk further about this matter.”

“I don’t like it, Jim. It means that the cruel war is not over.”

“Wait until we pass Wednesday,” said Jim, “and we’ll wring his neck. What a poisonous devil, to try and wean from us, to his ruin, an old man in his dotage!—I wish Antonia had stayed. I went out to set the boys wiring for news of washouts between here and Chicago. We mustn’t miss that trip, if we have to start to-night. This rain will make trouble with the track.—No, I don’t like it, either. Wasn’t it thoughtful of Antonia to come down! We can line Hinckley up all right, now we know it; but if it had gone on—we can’t stand a third solar-plexus blow....”

The sky darkened, until we had to turn on the lights, and the rain fell more and more heavily. Once or twice there were jarring rolls of distant thunder. To me there was something boding and ominous in the weather. The day wore on interminably in the quiet of a business office under such a sky. Elkins sent in a telegram which he had received that no trouble with water was looked for along our way to Chicago, which was by the Halliday line. As the dark day was lowering down to its darker close, I went into President Elkins’s office to take him home with me. As I entered through my private door, I saw Giddings coming in through the outer entrance.

“Say,” said he, “I wanted to see you two together. I know you have some business with Pendleton, and you’ve promised the boys a story for Thursday or Friday. Now, you’ve been a little sore on me because I haven’t absolutely cut Cornish.”

“Not at all,” said Jim. “You must have a poor opinion of our intelligence.”

“Well, you had no cause to feel that way,” he went on, “because, as a newspaperman, I’m supposed to have few friends and no enemies. Besides, you can’t tell what a man might sink to, deprived all at once of the friendship of three such men as you fellows!”

“Quite right,” said I; “but get to the point.”

“I’m getting to it,” said he. “I violate no confidence when I say that Cornish has got it in for your crowd in great shape. The point is involved in that. I don’t know what your little game is with old Pendleton, but whatever it is, Cornish thinks he can queer it, and at the same time reap some advantages from the old man, if he can have a few minutes’ talk with Pen before you do. And he’s going to do it, if he can. Now, I figure, with my usual correctness of ratiocination, that your scheme is going to be better for the town, and therefore for the Herald, than his, and hence this disclosure, which I freely admit has some of the ear-marks of bad form. Not that I blame Cornish, or am saying anything against him, you know. His course is ideally Iagoan: he stands in with Pendleton, benefits himself, and gets even with you all at one fell—”

“Stop this chatter!” cried Jim, flying at him and seizing him by the collar. “Tell me how you know this, and how much you know!”

“My God!” said Giddings, his lightness all departed, “is it as vital as that? He told me himself. Said it was something he wouldn’t put on paper and must tell Pendleton by word of mouth, and he’s on the train that just pulled out for Chicago.”

“He’ll beat us there by twelve hours,” said I, “and he can do all he threatens! Jim, we’re gone!”

Elkins leaped to the telephone and rang it furiously. There was the ring of command sounding through the clamor of desperate and dubious conflict in his voice.

“Give me the L. & G. W. dispatcher’s office, quick!” said he. “I can’t remember the number ... it’s 420, four, two, naught. Is this Agnew? This is Elkins talking. Listen! Without a moment’s delay, I want you to find out when President Pendleton’s special, east-bound on his Pacific Division, passes Elkins Junction. I’m at my office, and will wait for the information here.... Don’t let me wait long, please, understand? And, say! Call Solan to the ’phone.... Is this Solan? Mr. Solan, get out the best engine you’ve got in the yards, couple to it a caboose, and put on a crew to make a run to Elkins Junction, as quick as God’ll let you! Do you understand? Give me Schwartz and his fireman.... Yes, and Corcoran, too. Andy, this is a case of life and death—of life and death, do you understand? See that the line’s clear, and no stops. I’ve got to connect east at Elkins Junction with a special on that line.... Got to, d’ye see? Have the special wait at the State Street crossing until we come aboard!”

CHAPTER XXV.

That Last Weird Battle in the West.

There was still some remnant of daylight left when we stepped from a closed carriage at the State Street crossing and walked to the train prepared for us. The rain had all but ceased, and what there was came out of some northern quarter of the heavens mingled with stinging pellets of sleet, driven by a fierce gale. The turn of the storm had come, and I was wise enough in weather-lore to see that its rearguard was sweeping down upon us in all the bitterness of a winter’s tempest.

Beyond the tracks I could see the murky water of Brushy Creek racing toward the river under the State Street bridge.

“I believe,” said I, “that the surface-water from above is showing the flow from the flume.”

“Yes,” said Jim absently, “it must be about ready to break up. I hope we can get out of the valley before dark.”

The engine stood ready, the superabundant power popping off in a deafening hiss. The fireman threw open the furnace-door and stoked the fire as we approached. Engineer Schwartz, the same who had pulled us over the road that first trip, was standing by his engine, talking with our old conductor, Corcoran.

“Here’s a message for you, Mr. Elkins,” said Corcoran, handing Jim a yellow paper, “from Agnew.”

We read it by Corcoran’s lantern, for it was getting dusky for the reading of telegraph operator’s script.

“Water out over bottoms from Hinckley to the Hills,” so went the message. “Flood coming down valley. Snow and drifting wind reported from Elkins Junction and Josephine. Look out for washouts, and culverts and bridges damaged by running ice and water. Pendleton special fully up to running schedule, at Willow Springs.”

“Who’ve you got up there, Schwartz? Oh, is that you, Ole?” said Mr. Elkins. “Good! Boys, to-night our work has got to be done in time, or we might as well go to bed. It’s a case of four aces or a four-flush, and no intermediate stations. Mr. Pendleton’s special will pass the Junction right around nine—not ten minutes either way. Get us there before that. If you can do it safely, all right; but get us there. And remember that the regular rule in railroading is reversed to-night, and we are ready to take any chance rather than miss—any chances, mind!”

“We’re ready and waiting, Mr. Elkins,” said Schwartz, “but you’ll have to get on, you know. Looks like there was time enough if we keep the wheels turning, but this snow and flood business may cut some figure. Any chances, I believe you said, sir. All right! Ready when you are, Jack.”

“All aboard!” sang out Corcoran, and with a commonplace ding-dong of the bell, and an every-day hiss of steam, which seemed, somehow, out of keeping with the fearful and unprecedented exigency now upon us, we moved out through the yards, jolting over the frogs, out upon the main line; and soon began to feel a cheering acceleration in the recurrent sounds and shocks of our flight, as Schwartz began rolling back the miles under his flying wheels.

We sat in silence on the oil-cloth cushions of the seats which ran along the sides of the caboose. Corcoran, the only person who shared the car with us, seemed to have some psychical consciousness of the peril which weighed down upon us, and moved quietly about the car, or sat in the cupola, as mute as we.

There was no need for speech between my friend and me. Our minds, strenuously awake, found a common conclusion in the very nature of the case. Both doubtless had considered and rejected the idea of telegraphing Pendleton to wait for us at the Junction. No king upon his throne was more absolute than Avery Pendleton, and to ask him to waste a single quarter-hour of his time might give great offense to him whom we desired to find serene and complaisant. Again, any apparent anxiety for haste, any symptom of an attempt to rush his line of defenses, would surely defeat its object. No, we must quietly and casually board his train, and secure the signing of the contract before we reached Chicago, if possible.

“You brought that paper, Al?” said Jim, as if my thoughts had been audible to him.

“Yes,” said I, “it’s here.”

“I think we’d better be on our way to St. Louis,” said he. “He can hardly refuse to oblige us by going through the form of signing, so as to let us turn south at the river.”

“Very well,” said I, “St. Louis—yes.”

Out past the old Trescott farm, now covered with factories, cottages, and railway tracks, leaving Lynhurst Park off to our left, curving with the turnings of Brushy Creek Valley, through which our engineers had found such easy grades, dropping the straggling suburbs of the city behind us, we flew along the rails in the waning twilight of this grewsome day. On the windward windows and the roof rattled fierce flights of sleet and showers of cinders from the engine. Occasionally we felt the car sway in the howling gusts of wind, as we passed some opening in the hills and neared the more level prairie. Stories of cars blown from the rails flitted through my mind; and in contemplating such an accident my thoughts busied themselves with the details of plans for getting free from the wrecked car, and pushing on with the engine, the derailing of which somehow never occurred to me.

“We’re slowing down!” cried Jim, after a half-hour’s run. “I wonder what’s the matter!”

“For God’s sake, look ahead!” yelled Corcoran, leaping down from the cupola and springing to the door. We followed him to the platform, and each of us ran down on the step and, swinging out by the hand-rail, peered ahead into the dusk, the sleet stinging our cheeks like shot.

We were running along the right bank of the stream, at a point where the valley narrowed down to perhaps sixty rods of bottom. At the first dim look before us we could see nothing unusual, except that the background of the scene looked somehow as if lifted by a mirage. Then I noticed that up the valley, instead of the ghostly suggestions of trees and hills which bounded the vista in other directions, there was an appearance like that seen on looking out to sea.

“The flood!” said Jim. “He’s not going to stop, is he Corcoran?”

At this moment came at once the explanation of Schwartz’s hesitation and the answer to Jim’s question. We saw, reaching clear across the narrow bottom, a great wave of water, coming down the valley like a liquid wall, stretching across the track and seeming to forbid our further progress, while it advanced deliberately upon us, as if to drown engine and crew. Driven on by the terrific gale, it boiled at its base, and curled forward at its foamy and wind-whipped crest, as if the upper waters were impatient of the slow speed of those below. Beyond the wave, the valley, from bluff to bluff, was a sea, rolling white-capped waves. Logs, planks, and the other flotsam of a freshet moved on in the van of the flood.

It looked like the end of our run. What engineer would dare to dash on at such speed over a submerged track—possibly floated from its bed, possibly barricaded by driftwood? Was not the wave high enough to put out the fires and kill the engine? As we met the roaring eagre we felt the engine leap, as Schwartz’s hesitation left him and he opened the throttle. Like knight tilting against knight, wave and engine met. There was a hissing as of the plunging of a great red-hot bar into a vat. A roaring sheet of water, thrown into the air by our momentum, washed cab and tender and car, as a billow pours over a laboring ship; and we stood on the steps, drenched to the skin, the water swirling about our ankles as we rushed forward. Then we heard the scream of triumph from the whistle, with which Schwartz cheered us as the dripping train ran on through shallower and shallower water, and turning, after a mile or so, began climbing, dry-shod, the grade which led from the flooded valley and out upon the uplands.

“Come in, Mr. Elkins,” said Corcoran. “You’ll both freeze out there, wet as you are.”

Not until I heard this did I realize that we were still standing on the steps, our clothes congealing about us, peering through the now dense gloom ahead, as if for the apparition of some other grisly foe to daunt or drive us back.

We went in, and sat down by the roaring fire, in spite of which a chill pervaded the car. We were now running over the divide between the valley we had just left and that of Elk Fork. Up here on the highlands the wind more than ever roared and clutched at the corners of the car, and sometimes, as with the palm of a great hand, pressed us over, as if a giant were striving to overturn us. We could hear the engine struggling with the savage norther, like a runner breathing hard, as he nears exhaustion. Presently I noticed fine particles of snow, driven into the car at the crevices, falling on my hands and face, and striking the hot stove with little hissing explosions of steam.

“We’re running into a blizzard up here,” said Corcoran. “It’s a terror outside.”

“A terror; yes,” said Jim. “What sort of time are we making?”

“Just about holding our own,” said Corcoran. “Not much to spare. Got to stop at Barslow for water. But there won’t be any bad track from there on. This snow won’t cut any figure for three hours yet, and mebbe not at all, there’s so little of it.”

“Kittrick has been asking for an appropriation to rebuild the Elk Fork trestle,” said Jim. “Will it stand this flood?”

“Well,” said Corcoran, “if the water ain’t too high, and the ice don’t run too swift in the Fork, it’ll be all right. But if there’s any such mixture of downpour and thaw as there was along the Creek back there, we may have to jump across a gap. It’ll probably be all right.”

I remembered the Elk Fork, and the trestle just on the hither side of the Junction. I remembered the valley, green with trees, and populous with herds, winding down to the lake, and the pretty little town of Josephine. I remembered that gala day when we christened it. I groaned in spirit, as I thought of finding the trestle gone, after our hundred-and-fifty-mile dash through storm and flood. Yet I believed it would be gone. The blows showered upon us had beaten down my courage. I felt no shrinking from either struggle or danger; but this was merely the impulse which impels the soldier to fight on in despair, and sell his life dearly. I believed that ruin fronted us all; that our great system of enterprises was going down; that, East and West, where we had been so much courted and admired, we should become a by-word and a hissing. The elements were struggling against us. That vengeful flood had snatched at us, and barely missed; the ruthless hurricane was holding us back; and somehow fate would yet find means to lay us low. I had all day kept thinking of the lines:

“Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight
Like this last dim, weird battle of the west.
A death-white mist slept over land and sea:
Whereof the chill, to him who breathed it, drew
Down to his blood, till all his heat was cold
With formless fear: and even on Arthur fell
Confusion, since he saw not whom he fought.”

And this, thought I, was the end of the undertaking upon which we had entered so lightly, with frolic jests of piracy and Spanish galleons and pieces-of-eight, and with all that mock-seriousness with which we discussed hypnotic suggestion and psychic force! The bitterness grew sickening, as Corcoran, hearing the long whistle of the engine, said that we were coming into Barslow. The tragic foolery of giving that name to any place!

Out upon the platform here, in the blinding whirl of snow. The night operator came out and talked to us of the news of the line, while the engine ran on to the tank for water. There was another telegram from Agnew, saying that the Pendleton special was on time, and that Mr. Kittrick was following us with another train “in case of need.”

The operator was full of wild stories of the Brushy Creek flood, caused by the thaw and the cloudburst. We cut him short in this narration, and asked him of the conditions along the Elk Fork.

“She’s up and boomin’,” said he. “The trestle was most all under water an hour ago, and they say the ice was runnin’ in blocks. You may find the track left without any underpinnin’. Look out for yourselves.”

“Al,” said Jim slowly, “can you fire an engine?”

“I guess so,” said I, seeing his meaning dimly. “Why?”

“Al,” said he, as if stating the conclusion of a complicated calculation, “we must run this train in alone!”

I saw his intent fully, and knew why he walked so resolutely up to the engine, now backed down to take us on again. Schwartz leaned out of his cab, a man of snow and ice. Ole stood with his shovel in his hand white and icy like his brother worker. Both had been drenched, as we had; but they had had no red-hot stove by which to sit; and buffeted by the blizzard and powdered by the snow, they had endured the benumbing cold of the hurricane-swept cab.

“Get down here, boys,” said Jim. “I want to talk with you.”

Ole leaped lightly down, followed by Schwartz, who hobbled laboriously, stiffened with cold. Youth and violent labor had kept the fireman warm.

“Schwartz,” said Jim, “there is a chance that we’ll find the trestle weakened and dangerous. We’ll stop and examine it if we have time, but if it is as close a thing as I think it will be, we propose to make a run for it and take chances. Barslow and I are the ones, and the only ones, who ought to do this, because we must make this connection. We can run the engine. You and Ole and Corcoran stay here. Mr. Kittrick will be along with another train in a few hours. Uncouple the caboose and we’ll run on.”

Schwartz blew his nose with great deliberation.

“Ole,” said he, “what d’ye think of the old man’s scheme?”

“Ay tank,” said Ole, “dat bane hellufa notion!”

“Come,” said Mr. Elkins, “we’re losing time! Uncouple at once!”

We started to mount the engine; but Schwartz and Ole were before us, barring the way.

“Wait,” said Schwartz. “Jest look at it, now. It’s quite a run yet; and the chances are you’d have the cylinder-heads knocked out before you’d got half way; and then where’d you be with your connections?”

“Do you mean to say,” said Jim, “that there’s any likelihood of the engine’s dying on us between here and the Junction?”

“It’s a cinch!” said Schwartz.

“For God’s sake, then, let’s get on!” said Jim. “I believe you’re lying to me, Schwartz. But do this: As you come to the trestle, stop. From the approach we can see down the other track for ten miles. If Pendleton’s train is far enough off so as to give us time, we’ll see how the bridge is before we cross. If we’re pressed for time too much for this, promise me that you’ll stop and let us run the engine across alone.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Schwartz; “and if I conclude to, I will. It’s got to clear up, if we can see even the headlight on the other road very far. Ready, Jack?”

We wrung their hard and icy hands, leaped upon the train, and were away again, spinning down the grade toward the Elk Fork, and comforted by our speed. Jim and I climbed into the cupola and watched the track ahead, and the two homely heroes in the cab, as the light from the furnace blazed out upon them from time to time. Now we could see Schwartz stoking, to warm himself; now we could see him looking at his watch and peering anxiously out before him.

It was wearing on toward nine, and still our goal was miles away. Overhead the sky was clearing, and we could see the stars; but down on the ground the light, new snow still glided whitely along before the lessening wind. Once or twice we saw, or thought we saw, far ahead, lights, like those of a little prairie town. Was it the Junction? Yes, said Corcoran, when we called him to look; and now we saw that we were rising on the long approach to the trestle.

Would Schwartz stop, or would he run desperately across, as he had dashed through the flood? That was with him. His hand was on the lever, and we were helpless; but, if there was time, it would be mere foolhardiness to go upon the trestle at any but the slowest speed, and without giving all but one an opportunity to walk across. One, surely, was enough to go down with the engine, if it, indeed, went down.

“Don’t stay up there,” shouted Corcoran, “go out on the steps so you can jump for it if you have to!”

Out upon the platform we went in the biting wind, which still came fiercely on, sweeping over the waste of waters which covered the fields like a great lake. There was no sign of slowing down: right on, as if the road were rock-ballasted, and thrice secure, the engine drove toward the trestle.

“She’s there, anyhow, I b’lieve,” said Corcoran, swinging out and looking ahead; “but I wouldn’t bet on how solid she is!”

“Can’t you stop him?” said Jim.

“Stop nothing!” said Corcoran. “Look over there!”

We looked, and saw a light gleaming mistily, but distinct and unmistakable, across the water on the other track. It was the Pendleton special! Not much further from the station than were we, the train of moving palaces to which we were fighting our way was gliding to the point beyond which it must not pass without us. There was now no more thought of stopping; rather our desires yearned forward over the course, agonizing for greater speed. I did not see that we were actually upon the trestle until for some rods we had been running with the inky water only a few feet below us; but when I saw it my hopes leaped up, as I calculated the proportion of the peril which was passed. A moment more, and the solid approach would be under our spinning wheels.

But the moment more was not to be given us! For, even as this joy rose in my breast, I felt a shock; I heard a confused sound of men’s cries, and the shattering of timbers; the caboose whirled over cornerwise, throwing up into the air the step on which I stood; the sounds of the train went out in sudden silence as engine and car plunged off into the stream; and I felt the cold water close over me as I fell into the rushing flood. I arose and struck out for the shore; then I thought of Jim. A few feet above me in the stream I saw something like a hand or foot flung up out of the water, and sucked down again. I turned as well as I could toward the spot, and collided with some object under the surface. I caught at it, felt the skirt of a garment in my hand, and knew it for a man. Then, I remember helping myself with a plank from some washed-out bridge, and soon felt the ground under my feet, all the time clinging to my man. I tried to lift him out, but could not; and I locked my hands under his arm-pits and, slowly stepping backwards, I half carried, half dragged him, seeking a place where I could lay him down. I saw the dark line of the railroad grade, and made wearily toward it. I walked blindly into the water of the ditch beside the track, and had scarcely strength to pull myself and my burden out upon the bank. Then I stopped and peered into his face, and saw uncertainly that it was Jim—with a dark spot in the edge of the hair on his forehead, from which black streaks kept stealing down as I wiped them off; and with one arm which twisted unnaturally, and with a grating sound as I moved it; and from whom there came no other sound or movement whatever.

And over across the stream gleamed the lights of the Pendleton special as it sped away toward Chicago.

CHAPTER XXVI.

The End—and a Beginning.

As to our desperate run from Lattimore to the place where it came to an end in a junk-heap which had been once an engine, a car reduced to matchwood, a broken trestle, and a chaos of crushed hopes, and of the return to our homes thereafter, no further details need be set forth. The papers in Lattimore were filled with the story for a day or two, and I believe there were columns about it in the Associated Press reports. I doubt not that Mr. Pendleton and Mr. Cornish each read it in the morning papers, and that the latter explained it to the former in Chicago. From these reports the future biographer may glean, if he happens to come into being and to care about it, certain interesting facts about the people of this history. He will learn that Mr. Barslow, having (with truly Horatian swimming powers) rescued President Elkins from a watery grave, waited with his unconscious derelict in great danger from freezing, until they were both rescued a second time by a crew of hand-car men who were near the trestle on special work connected with the flood and its ravages. That President Elkins was terribly injured, having sustained a broken arm and a dangerous wound in the forehead. Moreover, he was threatened with pneumonia from his exposure. Should this disease really fasten itself upon him, his condition would be very critical indeed. That Mr. Barslow, the hero of the occasion, was uninjured. And I am ashamed to say that such student of history will find in an inconspicuous part of the same news-story, as if by reason of its lack of importance, the statement that O. Hegvold, fireman, and J. J. Corcoran, conductor of the wrecked train, escaped with slight injuries. And that Julius Schwartz, the engineer, living at 2714 May Street, and the oldest engineer on the L. & G. W., being benumbed by the cold, sank like a stone and was drowned. Poor Schwartz! Magnificent Schwartz! No captain ever went down, refusing to leave the bridge of his sinking ship, with more heroism than he; who, clad in greasy overalls, and sapped of his strength by the icy hurricane, finding his homely duty inextricably entangled with death, calmly took them both, and went his way.

This mine for the historian will also disclose to him the fact that the rescued crew and passengers were brought home by a relief-train in charge of General Manager Kittrick, and that Mr. Elkins was taken directly to the home of Mr. Barslow, where he at once became subject to the jurisdiction of physicians and nurses and “could not be seen.” But as to the reasons for the insane dash in the dark the historian will look in vain. I am disposed now to think that our motives were entirely creditable; but for them we got no credit.

Much less than a nine days’ wonder, however, was this tragedy of the Elk Fork trestle, for other sensations came tumbling in an army upon its very heels. Times of war, great public calamities, and panic are the harvest seasons of the newspapers; and these were great days for the newspapers in Lattimore. Not that they learned or printed all the news. I received a telegram, for instance, the day after the accident, which merely entered up judgment on the verdict of the day before. It was a message from Mr. Pendleton in Chicago.

“In matter of Lattimore & Great Western,” this telegram read, “directors refuse to ratify contract. This sent to save you trip to Chicago.”

“No news in that,” said I to Mr. Hinckley; “I wonder that he bothered to send it.”

But, in the era of slug heads which set in about three days after, and while Jim was still helpless up at my house, it would have received recognition as news—although they did very well without it.

“Great Failure!” said the Times. “Grain Belt Trust Company Goes to the Wall! Business Circles Convulsed! Receiver Appointed at Suit of Charles Harper of Chicago! Followed by Assignment of Hinckley & Macdonald, Bankers! Western Portland Cement Company Assigns! Atlas Power Company Follows Suit! Reason, Money Tied up in Banks and Trust Company. Where will it Stop? A Veritable Black Friday!”

Thus the headlines. In the news report itself the Times remarked upon the intimate connection of Mr. Elkins and myself with all the failed concerns. The firm of Elkins & Barslow, being primarily a real-estate and insurance agency, would not assign. As to the condition of the business of James R. Elkins & Company, whose operations in bonds and debentures had been enormous, nothing could be learned on account of the critical illness of Mr. Elkins.

“It is not thought,” said the Herald, “that the failures will carry down any other concerns. The run on the First National Bank was one of those panicky symptoms which are dangerous because so unreasoning. It is to be hoped that it will not be renewed in the morning. The banks are not involved in the operations of the Grain Belt Trust Company, the failure of which, it must be admitted, is sure to cause serious disturbances, both locally and elsewhere, wherever its wide-spread operations have extended.”

The physical system adjusts itself to any permanent lesion in the body, and finally ceases even to send out its complaining messages of pain. So we in Lattimore, who a few weeks ago had been ready to sacrifice anything for the keeping of our good name; who by stealth justly foreclosed mortgages justly due, lest the world should wonder at their nonpayment; who so greatly had rejoiced in our own strength; who had felt that, surely, we who had wrought such wonders could not now fail:—even we numbly came to regard receiverships and assignments as quite the thing to be expected. The fact that, all over the country, panic, ruin, and business stagnation were spreading like a pestilence, from just such centers of contagion as Lattimore, made it easier for us. Surely, we felt, nobody could justly blame us for being in the path of a tempest which, like a tropic cyclone, ravaged a continent.

This may have been weak self-justification; but, even yet, when I think of the way we began, and how the wave of “prosperity” rose and rose, by acts in themselves, so far as we could see, in every way praiseworthy; how with us, and with people engaged in like operations everywhere, the most powerful passions of society came to aid our projects; how the winds from the unknown, the seismic throbbings of the earth, and the very stars in their courses fought for us; and when, at last, these mightinesses turned upon us the cold and evil eye of their displeasure, how the heaped-up sea came pouring over here, trickling through there, and seeping under yonder, until our great dike toppled over in baleful tumult, “and all the world was in the sea”; how business, east, west, north, and south, went paralyzed with fear and distrust, and old concerns went out like strings of soap-bubbles, and shocks of pain and disease went round the world, and everywhere there was that hellish and portentous thing known to the modern world only, and called a “commercial panic”: when I broadly consider these things, I am not vain enough seriously to blame myself.

These thoughts are more than ever in my mind to-day, as I look back over the decade of years which have elapsed since our Waterloo at the Elk Fork trestle. I look out from the same library in which I once felt a sense of guilt at the expense of building it, and see the solid and prosperous town, almost as populous as we once saw it in our dreams. I am regarded locally as one of the creators of the city; but I know that this praise is as unmerited as was that blame of a dozen years ago. We rode on the crest of a wave, and we weltered in the trough of the sea; but we only seemed to create or control. I hold in my hand a letter from Jim, received yesterday, and eloquent of the changes which have taken place.

“I am sorry,” says he, “to be unable to come to your business men’s banquet. The building of a great auditorium in Lattimore is proof that we weren’t so insane, after all. I suppose that the ebb and flow of the tide of progress, which yearly gains upon the shore, is inevitable, as things are hooked up; but, after the ebb, it’s comforting to see your old predictions as to gain coming true, even if you do find yourself in the discard. It would be worth the trip only to see Captain Tolliver, and to hear him eliminate the r’s from his mother tongue. Give the dear old secesh my dearest love!

“But I can’t come, Al. I must be in Washington at that time on business of the greatest (presumptive) importance to the cattle interests of the buffalo-grass country. I could change my own dates; but my wife has arranged a tryst for a day certain with some specialists in her line in New York. She’s quite the queen of the cattle range—in New York: and, to be dead truthful, she comes pretty near it out here. It is rumored that even the sheepmen speak well of her.

“These Eastern trips are great things for her and the children. I’m riding the range so constantly, and get so much fun out of it, that I feel sort of undressed and embarrassed out of the saddle. In Washington I’m pointed out as a typical cowboy, the descendant of a Spanish vaquero and a trapper’s daughter. This helps me to represent my constituents in the sessions of the Third House, and to get Congressional attention to the ax I want ground. I am looked upon as in line for the presidency of the Amalgamated Association of American Ax-grinders.

“If we can make it, we’ll look in on you on our way back; but we don’t promise. With cattle scattered over two counties of buttes and canyons, we feel in a hurry when we get started home, after an absence sure to have been longer than we intended. Then, you know how I feel;—I wish the old town well, but I don’t enjoy every incident of my visits there.

“We expect to see the Cecil Barr-Smiths in New York. Cecil is the whole thing now with their companies—a sort of professional president in charge of the American properties; and Mrs. Cecil is as well known in some mighty good circles in London as she used to be in Lynhurst Park.

“I am glad to know that things are going toward the good with you. Personally, I never expect to be a seven-figure man again, and don’t care to be. I prefer to look after my few thousands of steers, laying on four hundred pounds each per year, far from the madding crowd. You know Riley’s man who said that the little town of Tailholt was good enough for him? Well, that expresses my view of the ‘J-Up-and-Down’ Ranch as a hermitage. It’ll do quite well. But these Eastern interests of Mrs. Jim are just now menacing to life in any hermitage. She has specifically stated on two or three occasions lately that this is no place to bring up a family. Think of a rough-rider like me in the wilds of New York! I can see plenty of ways of amusing myself down there, but not such peaceful ways as putting on my six-shooters and going out after timber wolves or mountain lions, or our local representative of the clan of the Hon. Maverick Brander. The future lowers dark with the multitudinous mouths of avenues of prosperity!”

This letter was a disappointment to Mr. Giddings. His special edition of the Herald commemorative of the opening of our Auditorium must now be deprived of its James R. Elkins feature, so far as his being the guest of honor goes. But there will be Jim’s photograph on the first page, and a half-tone reproduction of a picture of the wreck at the Elk Fork trestle.

“It is a matter of the deepest regret,” said the Herald this morning, “that Mr. Elkins cannot be with us on this auspicious occasion. He was the head of that most remarkable group of men who laid the foundations of Lattimore’s greatness. Only one of them, Mr. Barslow, still lives in Lattimore, where he has devoted his life, since the crash of many years ago, to the reorganization of the failed concerns, and especially the Grain Belt Trust Company, and to the salving of their properties in the interests of the creditors. His present prominence grows out of the signal skill and ability with which he has done this work; and he must prove a great factor in the city’s future development, as he has been in its past. Mr. Hinckley, the third member of the syndicate, now far advanced in years, is living happily with his daughter and her husband. The fourth, Mr. Cornish, resides in Paris, where he is well known as a daring and successful financial operator. He, of all the syndicate, retired from the Lattimore enterprises rich.

“There have been years when the names of these men were not held in the respect and esteem they deserve. The town was going backward. People who had been rich were, many of them, in absolute distress for the necessaries of life. And these men, in a vague sort of way, were blamed for it. Now, however, we can begin to see the wisdom of their plans and the vastness of the scope of their combinations. Nothing but the element of time was wanting, abundantly to vindicate their judgment and sagacity. The industries they founded succeeded as soon as they were divorced from the real-estate speculation which unavoidably entered into their management at the outset. It is regrettable that their founders could not share in their success.”

“Nothing but the element of time,” said I to Captain Tolliver, who sat by me in the car as I read this editorial, “prevents the hot-air balloon from carrying its load over the Rockies.”

“Nothing but luck,” said the Captain, “evah could have beaten us. It was the Fleischmann failure, and it was nothing else. As to the great qualities of Mr. Elkins, suh, the editorial puts it too mild by fah. He was a Titan, suh, a Titan, and we shall not look upon his like again. This town at this moment is vegetating fo’ the want of some fo’ceful Elkins to put life into it. The trilobites, as he so well dubbed them, ah in control again. What’s this Auditorium we’ve built? A good thing fo’ the city, cehtainly, a ve’y good thing: but see the difficulty, the humiliatin’ difficulty we had, in gettin’ togethah the paltry and trivial hundred and fifty thousand dolla’s! Why in that elder day, in such a cause, we’d have called a meetin’ in that old office of Elkins & Barslow’s, and made it up out of ouah own funds in fifteen minutes. It’s the so’t of cattle we’ve got hyah as citizens that’s handicappin’ us; but in spite of this, suh, ouah unsuhpassed strategical position is winnin’ fo’ us. We ah just now on the eve of great developments, Barslow, great developments! All my holdin’s ah withdrawn from mahket until fu’theh notice. Foh, as we ah so much behind the surroundin’ country in growth, we must soon take a great leap fo’wahd. We ah past the boom stage, I thank God, and what we ah now goin’ to get is a rathah brisk but entiahly healthy growth. A good, healthy growth, Barslow, and no boom!”

The disposition to moralize comes on with advancing middle age, and I could not help philosophizing on this perennial optimism of the Captain’s. He had used these very words when, so long ago, we had begun our “cruise.” The financial cycle was complete. The world had passed from hope to intoxication, from intoxication to panic, from panic to the depths, from this depression, ascending the long slope of gradual recovery, to the uplands of hope once more. Now, as twenty years ago, this feeling covered the whole world, was most pronounced in the newer and more progressive lands, and was voiced by Captain Tolliver, the grizzled swashbuckler of the land market. In it I recognized the ripple on the sands heralding the approach of another wave of speculation, which must roll shoreward in splendor and might, and, like its predecessors, must spend itself in thunderous ruin.

I often think of what General Lattimore was accustomed to say about these matters, and how Josie echoed his words as to the evil of fortunes coming to those who never earned them. Some time, I hope, we shall grow wise enough to—

I humbly beg your pardon, Madam, and thank you. That charming gesture of impatience was the one thing needful to admonish me that lectures are dull, and that the time has come to write finis. The rest of the story? Cornish—Jim—Josie—Antonia? Oh, this proneness of the business man to talk shop! Left to myself, I should have allowed their history to remain to the end of time, unresolved as to entanglements, and them unhealed as to bruises, bodily and sentimental. And, yet, those were the things which most filled our minds in the dark days after we missed connection with the Pendleton special.

In the first spasm of the crisis I was more concerned for Jim’s safety than with the long-feared monetary cataclysm. That was upon us in such power as to make us helpless; but Jim, wounded and prostrated as he was, his very life in danger, was a concrete subject of anxiety and a comfortingly promising object of care.

“If we can keep this from assuming the character of true pneumonia,” said Dr. Aylesbury, “there’s no reason why he shouldn’t recover.”

He had been unconscious and then delirious from the time when he and I had been picked up there by the railroad-dump, until we were well on our way home on Kittrick’s relief-train. At last he looked about him, and his eyes rested on Corcoran.

“Hello, Jack!” said he weakly; and as his glance took in Ole, he smiled and said: “A hellufa notion, you tank, do you? Ole, where’s Schwartz?”

Ole twisted and squirmed, but found no words.

“We couldn’t find Schwartz,” said Kittrick. “He was so cold, he went right down with the cab.”

“I see,” said Jim. “It was bitter cold!”

He said no more. I wondered at this, and almost blamed him, even in his stricken state, for not feeling the peculiar poignancy of our regret for the loss of Schwartz. And then, his face being turned away, I peeped over to see if he slept, and saw where his tears had dropped silently on the piled-up cushions of his couch.

Mrs. Trescott came several times a day to inquire as to Mr. Elkins’s welfare; but Josie not at all. Antonia’s carriage stopped often at the door; and somebody stood always at the telephone, answering the stream of questions. But when, on that third evening, it became known that the last “battle in the west” had gone against us, that all our great Round Table was dissolved, and that Jim’s was a sinking and not a rising sun, public interest suddenly fell off. And the poor fellow whose word but yesterday might have stood against the world, now lay there fighting for very life, and few so poor to do him reverence. I had been so proud of his splendid and dominant strength that this, I think, was the thing that brought the bitterness of failure most keenly home to me. I could not feel satisfied with Josie. There were good reasons why she might have refused to choose between Jim and the man who had ruined him, while there was danger of her choice itself becoming the occasion of war between them. But that was over now, and Cornish was victorious. Gradually the fear grew upon me that we had rated Josie’s womanhood higher than she herself held it, and that Cornish was to win her also. He had that magnetism which so attracted her as a girl, but that I had believed incapable of holding her as a woman. And now he had wealth, and Jim was poor, and the whole world stood with its back to us, and Josie held aloof. I was afraid he would speak of it, every time he tried to talk.

That night when the evening papers came out with all their plenitude of bad news (for we had pleased Watson by dying on the evening papers’ time), it was a dark moment for us. Jim lay silent and unmoving, as if all his ebullient energy had gone forever. The physician omitted the dressing of his wound, because, he said, he feared the patient was not strong enough to bear it: and this, as well as the strange semi-stupor of the sufferer, frightened me. Jim had said little, and most of his words had been of the trivial things of the sick-room. Only once did he refer to the great affairs in which we had been for so long engrossed.

“What day is this?” he asked.

“Friday,” said I, “the twenty-first.”

“By this time,” said he feebly, “we must be pretty well shot to rags.”

“Never mind about that,” said I, holding his hands in mine. “Never mind, Jim!”

“Some of those gophers,” said he, after a while, “used to learn to ... rub their noses ... in the dirt ... and always stick their heads up—outside the snare!”

“Yes,” said I, “I remember. Go to sleep, old man!”

I thought him delirious, and he knew and resented it; being evidently convinced that he had just made a wise remark. It touched me to hear him, even in his extremity, return to those boyhood days when we trapped and hunted and fished together. He saw my pitying look.

“I’m all right,” said he; but he said no more.

The nurse came in, and told me that Mrs. Barslow wished to see me in the library. I went down, and found Josie and Alice together.

“I got a letter from—from Mr. Cornish,” said she, “telling me that he was returning from Chicago to-night, and was coming to see me. I ran over, because—and told mamma to say that I couldn’t see him.”

“See him by all means,” said I with some bitterness. “You should make it a point to see him. Mr. Cornish is a success. He alone of us all has shown real greatness.”

And it dawned upon me, as I said it, what Jim had meant by his reference to the gopher which learns to stick its head up “outside the snare.”

“I want to ask you,” said Josie, “is it all true—what was in the paper to-night about all of you, Mr. Hinckley and yourself, and—all of you having failed?”

“It is only a part of the truth,” I replied. “We are ruined absolutely.”

She said nothing by way of condolence, and uttered no expressions of regret or sympathy. She was apparently in a state of suppressed excitement, and started at sounds and movements.

“Is Mr. Elkins very ill?” said she at length.

“So ill,” said Alice, “that unless he rallies soon, we shall look for the worst.”

No more at this than at the other ill news did Josie express any regret or concern. She sat with her fingers clasped together, gazing before her at the fire in the grate, as if making some deep and abstruse calculation. But when the door-bell rang, she started and listened attentively, as the servant went to the door, and then returned to us.

“A gentleman, Mr. Cornish, to see Miss Trescott,” said the maid. “And he says he must see her for a moment.”

“Alice,” said Josie, under her breath, “you go, please! Say to him that I cannot see him—now! Oh, why did he follow me here?”

“Josie,” said Alice dramatically, “you don’t mean to say that you are afraid of this man! Are you?”

“No, no!” said the girl doubtfully and distressfully; “but it’s so hard to say ‘No’ to him! If you only knew all, Alice, you wouldn’t blame me—and you’d go!”

“If you’re so far gone—under his influence,” said Alice, “that you can’t trust yourself to say ‘No,’ Josephine Trescott, go, in Heaven’s name, and say ‘Yes,’ and be the wife of a millionaire—and a traitor and scoundrel!”

As Alice said this she came perilously near the histrionic standard of the tragic stage. Josie rose, looked at her in surprise, in which there seemed to be some defiance, and walked steadily out to the parlor. I was glad to be out of the affair, and went back to Jim. I stood regarding my broken and forsaken friend, in watching whose uneasy sleep I forgot the crisis downstairs, when I was startled and angered by the slamming of the front door, and heard a carriage rattle furiously away down the street.

Soon I heard the rustle of skirts, and looked up, thinking to see my wife. But it was Josie. She came in, as if she were the regularly ordained nurse, and stepped to the bedside of the sleeping patient. The broken arm in its swathings lay partly uncovered; and across his wounded brow was stretched a broad bandage, below which his face showed pale and weary-looking, in the half-stupor of his deathlike slumber: for he had become strangely quiet. His uninjured arm lay inertly on the counterpane beside him.

She took his hand, and, seating herself on the bed, began softly stroking and patting the hand, gazing all the time in his face. He stirred, and, turning his eyes toward her, awoke.

“Don’t move, my darling,” said she quietly, and as if she had been for a long, long time quite in the habit of so speaking to him; “don’t move, or you’ll hurt your arm.” Then she bent down her head, lower and lower, until her cheek touched his.

“I’ve come to sit with you, Jim, dear,” said she, softly—“if you want me—if I can do you any good.”

“I want you, always,” said he.

She stooped again, and this time laid her lips lingeringly on his; and his arm stole about the slim waist.

“If you’ll just get well,” she whispered, “you may have me—always!”

He passed his fingers over her hair, and kissed her again and again. Then he looked at her long and earnestly.

“Where’s Al?” said he; “I want Al!”

I came forward promptly. I thought that this violation of the doctor’s regulation requiring rest and quiet had gone quite far enough.

“Al,” said he, still holding her hand, “do you remember out there by the windmill tower that night, and the petunias and four-o’clocks?”

“Yes, Jim, I remember,” said I. “But you mustn’t talk any more now.”

“No, I won’t,” said he, and went right on; “but even before that, and ever since, I haven’t wanted anything we’ve been trying so hard to get, half as much as I’ve wanted Josie; and now—we lost the fight, didn’t we? Things have been slipping away from us, haven’t they? Gone, aren’t they?”

“Go to sleep now, Jim,” said I. “Plenty of time for those things when you wake up.”

“Yes,” said he; “but before I do, I want you to tell me one thing, honest injun, hope to die, you know!”

“Yes,” said I; “what is it, Jim?”

“I’ve been seeing a lot of funny things in the dark corners about here; but this seems more real than any of them,” he went on; “and I want you to tell me—is this really Josie?”

“Really,” I assured him, “really, it is.”

“Oh, Jim, Jim!” she cried, “have you learned to doubt my reality, just because I’m kind! Why, I’m going to be good to you now, dearest, always, always! And kinder than you ever dreamed, Jim. And I’m going to show you that everything has not slipped away from you, my poor, poor boy; and that, whatever may come, I shall be with you always. Only get well; only get well!”

“Josie,” said he, smiling wanly, “you couldn’t kill me—now—not with an ax!”

THE END