The Spenders Part 46

"We can't--we ain't got the stake for a new deck. Oh, dear! think of your ma and me not knowin' where to turn fur a meal of victuals at our time of life."

Percival was being forced to cheerfulness in spite of himself.

"Come, it isn't as bad as that, Uncle Peter. We've got properties left, and good ones, too."

Uncle Peter weakly waved the hand of finished discouragement. "Hush, don't speak of that. Them properties need a manager to make 'em pay--a plain business man--a man to stay on the ground and watch 'em and develop 'em with his brains--a young man with his health! What good am I--a poor, broken-down old cuss, bent double with rheumatiz--almost--I'm ashamed of you fur suggesting such a thing!"

"I'll do it myself--I never thought of asking you."

Uncle Peter emitted a nasal gasp of disgust.

"You--you--you'd make a purty manager of anything, wouldn't you! As if you could be trusted with anything again that needs a schoolboy's intelligence. Even if you had the brains, you ain't got the taste nor the sperrit in you. You're too lazy--too triflin'. _You_, a-goin' back there, developin' mines, and gettin' out ties, and lumber, and breeding shorthorns, and improvin' some of the finest land G.o.d ever made--_you_ bein' sober and industrious, and smart, like a business man has got to be out there nowadays. That ain't any bonanza country any more; 1901 ain't like 1870; don't figure on that. You got to work the low-grade ore now for a few dollars a ton, and you got to work it with brains.

No, sir, that country ain't what it used to be. There might 'a' been a time when you'd made your board and clothes out there when things come easier. Now it's full of men that hustle and keep their mind on their work, and ain't runnin' off to pink teas in New York. It takes a man with some of the brains your pa had to make the game pay now. But _you_--don't let me hear any more of _that_ nonsense!"

Percival had entered the room pale. He was now red. The old man's bitter contempt had flushed him into momentary forgetfulness of the disaster.

"Look here, Uncle Peter, you've been telling me right along I _did_ have my father's head and my father's ways and his nerve, and G.o.d knows what I _didn't_ have that he had!"

"I was fooled,--I can't deny it. What's the use of tryin' to crawl out of it? You did fool me, and I own up to it; I thought you had some sense, some capacity; but you was only like him on the surface; you jest got one or two little ways like his, that's all--Dan'l J. now was good stuff all the way through. He might 'a' guessed wrong on copper, but he'd 'a' saved a get-away stake or borrowed one, and he'd 'a' piked back fur Montana to make his pile right over--and he'd 'a' _made_ it, too--that was the kind of man your pa was--he'd 'a' made it!"

"I _have_ saved a get-away stake."

"Your pa had the head, I tell you--and the spirit--"

"And, by G.o.d, I'll show you I've got the head. You think because I wanted to live here, and because I made this wrong play that I'm like all these pinheads you've seen around here. I'll show you different!--I'll fool you."

"Now don't explode!" said the old man, wearily. "You meant well, poor fellow--I'll say that fur you; you got a good heart. But there's lots of good men that ain't good fur anything in particular. You've got a good heart--yes--you're all right from the neck down."

"See here," said Percival, more calmly, "listen: I've got you all into this thing, and played you broke against copper; and I'm going to get you out--understand that?"

The old man looked at him pityingly.

"I tell you I'm going to get you out. I'm going back there, and get things in action, and I'm going to stay by them. I've got a good idea of these properties--and you hear me, now--I'll finish with a bank-roll that'll choke Red Bank Canon."

Fouts knocked and came in.

"Now you go along up-town, Uncle Peter. I want a few minutes with Mr.

Fouts, and I'll come to your place at seven."

The old man arose dejectedly.

"Don't let me interfere a minute with your financial operations. I'm too old a man to be around in folks' way."

He slouched out with his head bent.

A moment later Percival remembered his last words, also his reference to Blythe. He was seized with fear for what he might do in his despair.

Uncle Peter would act quickly if his mind had been made up.

He ran out into Wall Street, and hurried up to Broadway. A block off on that crowded thoroughfare he saw the tall figure of Uncle Peter turning into the door of a saloon. He might have bought poison. He ran the length of the block and turned in.

Uncle Peter stood at one end of the bar with a gla.s.s of creamy beer in front of him. At the moment Percival entered he was enclosing a large slab of Swiss cheese between two slices of rye bread.

He turned and faced Percival, looking from him to his sandwich with vacant eyes.

"I'm that wrought up and distressed, son, I hardly know what I'm doin'!

Look at me now with this stuff in my hands."

"I just wanted to be sure you were all right," said Percival, greatly relieved.

"All right," the old man repeated. "All right? My G.o.d,--ruined! There's nothin' left to do now."

He looked absently at the sandwich, and bit a generous semicircle into it.

"I don't see how you can eat, Uncle Peter. It's so horrible!"

"I don't myself; it ain't a healthy appet.i.te--can't be--must be some kind of a fever inside of me--I s'pose--from all this trouble. And now I've come to poverty and want in my old age. Say, son, I believe there's jest one thing you can do to keep me from goin' crazy."

"Name it, Uncle Peter. You bet I'll do it!"

"Well, it ain't much--of course I wouldn't expect you to do all them things you was jest braggin' about back there--about goin' to work the properties and all that--you would do it if you could, I know--but it ain't that. All I ask is, don't play this Wall Street game any more. If we can save out enough by good luck to keep us decently, so your ma won't have to take boarders, why, don't you go and lose that, too.

Don't mortgage the One Girl. I may be sort of superst.i.tious, but somehow, I don't believe Wall Street is your game. Course, I don't say you ain't got a game--of some kind--but I got one of them presentiments that it ain't Wall Street." "I don't believe it is, Uncle Peter--I won't touch another share, and I won't go near Shepler again. We'll keep the One Girl."

He called a cab for the old man, and saw him started safely off up-town.

At the hotel Uncle Peter met Billy Brue flourishing an evening paper that flared with exclamatory headlines.

"It's all in the papers, Uncle Peter!"

"Dead broke! Ain't it awful, Billy!"

"Say, Uncle Peter, you said you'd raise h.e.l.l, and you done it. You done it good, didn't you?"

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

The News Broken, Whereupon an Engagement is Broken

At seven Percival found Uncle Peter at his hotel, still in abysmal depths of woe. Together they went to break the awful news to the unsuspecting Mrs. Bines and Psyche.

"If you'd only learned something useful while you had the chance,"

began Uncle Peter, dismally, as they were driven to the Hightower, "how to do tricks with cards, or how to sing funny songs, like that little friend of yours from Baltimore you was tellin' me about. Look at him, now. He didn't have anything but his own ability. He could tell you every time what card you was thinkin' about, and do a skirt dance and give comic recitations and imitate a dog fight out in the back yard, and now he's married to one of the richest ladies in New York. Why couldn't you 'a' been learnin' some of them clever things, so you could 'a' married some good-hearted woman with lots of money--but no--" Uncle Peter's tones were bitter to excess--"you was a rich man's son and raised in idleness--and now, when the rainy day's come, you can't even take a white rabbit out of a stove-pipe hat!"

To these senile maunderings Percival paid no attention. When they came into the crowd and lights of the Hightower, he sent the old man up alone.