Winning the Wilderness Part 27

"That's one fly-by-night calling himself Thomas Smith. Innocent name and easy to lose if you don't want it. Not like Gimpke or Aydelot, now. He's from Wilmington, Delaware--maybe."

"You seem to doubt his genuineness," Asher remarked.

"I don't believe he will a.s.say well," Jacobs agreed. "I've doubted him since the day he landed in Carey's Crossing fifteen years ago. Inside of an hour and a half I caught him and Champers in a consultation so secret they fastened newspapers across the window to keep from being seen."

"Where were you meanwhile?"

"Up on the roof, fixing the sign the wind had blown loose. When they saw me through the uncovered upper pane, they shaded that, too. I've little interest in a man like that."

"Does he come here often?" Asher inquired.

"He's here and away, but he never sets foot in Careyville. My guess is that he's a part of the 'Co.' of 'Champers and Co.' and that Hans Wyker is the rest of it. Also that in what they can get by fair means, each of the trio reserves the right to act alone and independently of the other two, but when it comes to a cut-throat game, they combine as readily as hydrogen and sulphur and oxygen; and, combined, they have the same effect on a proposition that sulphuric acid has on litmus paper. But this is all only a Jew's guess, of course. For myself, I have business with only one of the three, Wyker. He doesn't like my sheep, evidently, because he knows I keep track of his whisky selling in this town and keep the law forever hanging over him. But I've sworn under high heaven to fight that curse to humanity wherever I find it threatening, and under high heaven I'll do it, too."

Jacobs' face was the face of a resolute man with whom law was law. Then the two talked of other things as they finished their meal.

John Jacobs was city bred, a merchant by instinct, a Jew in religion, and a strictly honest and exacting business man. Asher Aydelot had been a country boy and was by choice a farmer. He was a Protestant of the Methodist persuasion. It must have been his business integrity that first attracted Jacobs to him. Jacobs was a timid man, and no one else in Kansas, not even Doctor Carey, understood him or appreciated him quite as keenly as Asher Aydelot did.

CHAPTER XII

THE FAT YEARS

"The lean years have pa.s.sed, and I approve of these fat ones."

"Be careful, old man. That way lies bad work."

--_The Light That Failed._

John Jacobs little realized how true was his estimate of the firm of "Champers & Co." Nor did he suspect that at this very minute the firm was in council in the small room beyond the part.i.tion wall--the "blind tiger"

of the Wyker eating-house.

"I tell you it's our chance," Darley Champers was declaring emphatically.

"You mustn't hold back your capital now. This firm isn't organized to promote health nor Sunday Schools nor some other fellow's fortune. We are together for yours truly, every one of us. If you two have some other games back of your own pocketbooks, they don't cut any against this common purpose. I'm for business for Darley Champers. That's why I'm here. I've got no love for Doc Carey, ruling men's minds like they was all putty, and him a putty knife to shape 'em finer yet. And another fellow I'd like to put down so hard he'll never get over it is that straight-up-and-down farmer, Asher Aydelot of the Sunflower Ranch, who walks like a military captain, and works like a hired man, and is so danged independent he don't give a d.a.m.n for no man's opinion of him. If it hadn't been for him we'd a had the whole Gra.s.s River Valley now to speculate on. I'm something of a danged fool, but I knowed this boom was comin'. I felt it in my craw."

"So you always said, Champers," Thomas Smith broke in, "but it's been a century coming. And look at the capital I've sunk. If you'd worked that deal through, time of the drouth in seventy-four, we'd be in clover and no Careyville and no Aydelots in the way. I could have saved Asher's little bank stock then, too."

"You could?" Darley Champers stared at the speaker.

"Yes, if he'd given up right that first trip of yours down there. When he refused I knew his breed too well. He's as set and slow and stubborn as his old dad ever was. That's what ailed those two, they were too near alike; and you'll never catch Asher Aydelot bending to our plans now. I warn you."

"Well, but about this bank account?" Champers queried.

"Oh, the fates played the devil with everything in two weeks. Doc Carey got in with Miss Jane Aydelot down at Philadelphia, and she came straight to Cloverdale, and, womanlike, made things so hot there I had to let loose of everything at once or lose everything I had saved for myself. Serves her right, for Asher's pile went into the dump, although there's naturally no love lost between the two. But this Miss Jane is Aydelot clear through.

She's so honest and darned set you can't budge her. But she's a timid woman and so she's safe if you keep out of her range. She won't chase you far, but she's got fourteen rattles and a b.u.t.ton."

"Well, well, let her rattle, and get to pusiness," Hans Wyker demanded.

"Here's Champers says he's here yust for pusiness and he wants to get Aydelot and Carey, too."

"Gentlemen!" Champers struck the table with his fist. "Let's play fair now, so's not to spoil each other's games. I'll fix Aydelot if it's in me to do it, just because he's stood in my way once too often. But he's my side line, him and Carey is. I'm here for business. Tell me what you are here for."

Hans Wyker's little eyes were red with pent-up anger and malice as he burst out:

"Shentlemen, you know my hart luck. You see where I be today. I not repeat no tiresome history here. Kansas yust boomin'! Wykerton dead! Yon Yacob own all der groun' right oop to der corporation line on tree side, an' he not sell one inch for att.i.tions to dis town. He say dere notings to keep town goin' in two, tree year. What we care? We be rich by den an' let it go to der devil. But he not sell. Den I go mit you and we organize town company. We mark townsite, we make Gra.s.s River sell to us. We boom! boom!

boom! We knock Careyville from de prairie alretty, mak' Yon Yacob go back to Cincinnati where he belong mit his Chews. He d.a.m.ned queer Chew, but he Chew all de same all right, all right. I want to down Yon Yacob, an' I do it if it take tree hundred fifty years. I'll kill him if he get in my way.

I hate him. He run me off my saloon in ol' Carey Crossin'; my prewery goin' smash mit der d.a.m.ned prohibittery law; he growin' rich in Careyville, an' me!"

His voice rose to a shriek and he stamped his foot in rage.

"Hold your noise, Wyker!" Champers growled. "Don't you know who's on the other side of that part.i.tion?"

"I built that part.i.tion mineself. It's von dead noise-breaker," Wyker began. But Champers broke in:

"It's your turn, Smith."

Dr. Carey had described Smith once as rather small, with close-set dark eyes and a stiff, half-paralyzed right arm and wrist, a man who wrote in a cramped left-handed style. There was a crooked little scar cutting across his forehead now above the left eye that promised to stay there for life.

He had a way of evading a direct gaze, suggesting timidity. And when Hans Wyker had threatened to kill John Jacobs he shivered a little, and for the instant a gray pallor crept across his face, unnoted by his companions.

"We propose to start a town in the Gra.s.s River country that will kill Careyville. We two put up the capital. You do the buying and selling.

We'll handle real estate lively for a few months. We'll advertise till we fill the place with buyers, and we'll make our pile right there and then--and it's all to be done by Darley Champers & Co. We two are not to be in the open in the game at all."

Thomas Smith spoke deliberately. There seemed to be none of Champers'

bl.u.s.ter nor Wyker's malice in the third part of the company, or else he was better schooled in self-control.

"You have it exactly," Champers declared. "The first thing is to take in fellows like Jim Shirley and Cyrus Bennington and Todd Stewart, and Aydelot, if we can."

"Yes, if we can, but we can't," Thomas Smith insisted.

"And having got the land, with or without their knowing why, we boom her to destruction. But to be fair, now, why do you want to keep yourself in hiding, and who's the fellow you want to kill?" Darley Champers said with a laugh.

"I may as well let you know now why I can't be known in this," Thomas Smith said smoothly, even if the same gray hue did flit like a shadow a second time across his countenance--a thing that did not escape the shrewd eye of Darley Champers this time.

"Wyker is pitted against Jacobs. You are after Asher Aydelot's scalp, if you can get it. I must get Jim Shirley, fair or foul."

Smith's low voice was full of menace, boding more trouble to his man than the bl.u.s.ter and threat of the other two could compa.s.s.

"I paid you well, Darley Champers, for all information concerning Jim when I came here fifteen years ago. I was acting under orders, and as Jim would have known me then I had to keep out of sight a little."

"Vell, and vot has Shirley ever done mit you that you so down on him?"

Hans Wyker asked.

The smooth mask did not drop from Smith's face, save that the small dark eyes burned with an intense glow.

"I tell you I was acting under orders from Shirley's brother Tank in Cloverdale, Ohio. And if Dr. Carey hadn't been so blamed quick I'd have gotten a letter Mrs. Tank Shirley had written to Jim the very day I got to Carey's Crossing. No brother ever endured more from the hands of a relative than Tank Shirley endured from Jim. In every way Jim tried to defraud him of his rights; tried to prejudice their own father against him; tried to rob him of the girl, a rich girl, too, that he married in spite Of Jim--and at last contrived to prejudice his wife against him, and with Jane Aydelot interfering all the time, like the old maid that she is, managed to get Tank Shirley's only child away from him and given legally to Jim. Do you wonder Tank hates his brother? You wouldn't if I dared to tell you all of Jim's cussedness, but some things I'm sworn to secrecy on.

That's Tank's streak of kindness he can't overcome. Gets it from his mother. I'm his agent, and I'm paid for my work. You both understand me, I reckon."

"We unterstant, an' we stay py you to der ent," Hans Wyker exclaimed enthusiastically. But Darley Champers had a different mind.