Winning the Wilderness Part 28

"I'll watch you, my man, and I'll do business with you accordin'," he said to himself. "Devil knows whether you are Thomas Smith workin' for Tank Shirley, or Tank Shirley workin' for hisself under a a.s.soomed name. Long as I get your capital to push my business I don't care who you are." Aloud he remarked:

"So that's how Jim Shirley got that little girl. She's a comely youngun, anyhow. But Smith, since you are only an agent and n.o.body knows it but us, why keep yourself so secret? Where's the harm in letting Shirley lay eyes on you? Why not come out into the open? How'll Shirley know you from the Mayor of Wilmington, Delaware, anyhow?"

Thomas Smith's face was ashy and his voice was hoa.r.s.e with anger as he replied:

"Because I'm not now from Wilmington, Delaware, any more than I ever was.

I'm from Cloverdale, Ohio. You know, Wyker, how I lost money in your brewery, investing in machinery and starting the thing, only to go to smash on us."

He turned on Hans fiercely.

"And you know how I lost by you in this town and the land around it. It was my money took up all this ground to help build up Wykerton and you, as my agent, sold every acre of it to Jacobs."

This as fiercely as Darley Champers.

Both men nodded and Darley broke in:

"I was honest. I thought Jacobs was gettin' it to boom Wykerton with, or I'd never sold. And him bein' right here was a danged sight easier'n havin' some man in Wilmington, Delaware, to write to. That's why I let him in on three sides, appealin' to his pride."

But Thomas Smith stopped him abruptly.

"Hold on! You need money to push your schemes now. And I'm the one who does the financing for you."

Both men agreed.

"Then it's death to either of you if you ever tell a word of this. You understand that? I'm not to be known here because I'm a dead man. I'm the cashier that was mixed up in the Cloverdale bank affair. And, as I say, if Jane Aydelot had let things alone Tank Shirley and I could have pulled out honorably, but, womanlike, because she had a lot of bank stock and was the biggest loser of anybody, in her own mind, she pushed things where a man would not have noticed or kept still, and she kept pushing year after year. d.a.m.n a woman, anyhow! All I could do at last was to commit suicide.

Tank planned it. It saved me and helped Tank. You see, Miss Jane had a line around his neck, too. She was the only one who really saw me go down and she spread the report that I'd committed suicide on account of the bank failure. So, gentlemen, I'm really drowned in Clover Creek right above where the railroad grade that cuts the Aydelot farm reaches the water."

Darley Champers wondered why Thomas Smith was so particular in his description.

"I've known Jim Shirley all my life. He was as bad a boy as ever left Cloverdale, Ohio, under a cloud. Got into trouble over some girl, I believe, finally. But you can see why I'm out of this game when it comes to the open. And maybe you could understand, if you knew the brothers as well as I do, why Tank keeps me after him. And I'll get him yet."

The vengeance of the last words was venomous.

"Well, now we understand each other we'll not be tramping on anybody's corns," Darley Champers urged, anxious to get away from the subject.

With all of his shortcomings he was a man of different mould from the other men. Eagerness to represent and invest large capital and to make by far the best of a bargain by any means just inside the law were his besetments. But he had not the unremitting hatred that enslaved Thomas Smith and Hans Wyker.

Champers' store of energy seemed exhaustless. Following this council he fell upon the Gra.s.s River Valley and threshed it to his profit.

One mid-June evening the Gra.s.s River schoolhouse was lighted early, while up from the prairie ranches came the work-worn farmers.

This year the crop outlook was bad, yet somehow an expectant spirit lifted sagging shoulders and looked out through hopeful eyes.

While the men exchanged neighborly greetings, a group of children, the second generation in the valley, romped about in the twilight outside.

"Here comes Thaine," they shouted as Asher Aydelot and his boy came down the trail.

"Come on, Thaine," Leigh Shirley said, reaching for his hand. "We are going to play drop the handkerchief."

"Thaine's going to stand by me," pretty Jo Bennington declared, pushing Leigh boisterously aside.

Josephine, the week-old baby Mrs. Aydelot had gone to see one day nine years ago, had grown into a big, black-eyed, rosy-cheeked girl who lorded it over every other child in the neighborhood. And every other child submitted except Leigh Shirley, who had a quiet habit of going straight ahead about her affairs in a way that vexed the pretty Jo not a little.

From the first coming of Leigh among the children Jo had resented her independence. But, young as they all were, she objected most to Thaine Aydelot's claiming Leigh as his playmate. Thaine was Jo's idol from earliest memory.

"What's the row here?" Todd Stewart, Junior, broke in. "You mustn't fuss or you'll all have to go in and listen to Darley Champers and I'll play out here by myself."

Todd was a young-hearted, half-grown boy now, able to work all day in the hayfield or to romp like a child with younger children in the evening. He was half a dozen years older than Thaine and Jo, a difference that would tend to disappear by the end of a decade.

"We'll be good, Toddie, if you'll let us stay and you'll play with us,"

the children entreated, and the game began, with Thaine between Leigh and Jo.

When Asher Aydelot joined the group inside Darley Champers rapped on the desk and called the men to order.

"Gentlemen, let's have a businesslike proceeding," he said. "Who shall preside at the meeting?"

"I move Jim Shirley be made chairman. He's the best looking man here,"

Todd Stewart said, half seriously.

The motion carried and Jim, looking big and handsome and kindly as always, took the chair.

"I'll ask Mr. Champers to state the purpose of the meeting," he said.

"Gentlemen," Champers began with tremendous dignity, "I represent the firm of the Champers Town Company, just chartered, with half a million dollars'

capital. Gentlemen, you have the finest valley in Kansas."

The same was said of every other valley in Kansas in the fat years of the boom. But to do Darley justice, he had never made a finer effort in his life of many efforts than he was bent on making tonight.

"And this site is the garden spot of it all," he continued. "The elevation, the water power at the deep bend of Gra.s.s River (where at that moment only a trace of water marked the river's gra.s.sy right of way), the fine farming land--everything ready for a sudden leap into prosperity.

And, gentlemen, the A. and T. (Arctic and Tropic) North and South Railroad will begin grading down this very stream inside of thirty days. A town here this year will be a city next year, a danged sight bigger city than Careyville will ever be. Why, that town's got its growth and is beginning to decay right now. The A. and T. will miss it comin' south, by ten mile."

He paused and looked at the men before him. They were farmers, drooped to rest after the long summer day's work, yet they listened with intense eagerness. Only Asher Aydelot sat in easy dignity, looking straight at Darley Champers with steady interest. The four years' training in the University of the Civil War had not been overcome by his hold on the plow handles. And no farmer will grow hopelessly stooped in shoulders and sad of countenance who lifts his face often from the clods beneath his feet to the stars above his head.

"You all know crops was poor last year and only moderately promisin' this year," Champers continued. "But this is temporary and you are stayers, as I can testify. The Champers Town Company is ready to locate a townsite and start a town right here at the deep bend of Gra.s.s River. We propose to plat the prairie into town lots with a public square for the courthouse and sites for the railroad station and grain elevators, a big hotel, an opera house, and factories and foundries that's bound to come."

The speaker paused a moment. Then the inspiration of the evening came to him.

"When you first came here, Aydelot, there wasn't nothing but imagination to make this a farming community. And it looked lots more impossible then than this looks to me now. What's to prevent a metropolis risin' right here where a decade and a half ago there wasn't nothing but bare prairie?"

The appeal was forceful, and the very men who had stood like heroes against hardships and had fought poverty with a grim, unyielding will-power, the same men fell now before Darley Champers' smooth advances.

"Our company's chartered with no end of stock for sale now that in six months will be out of sight above par and can't be bought for no price.

It's your time to invest now. You can easy mortgage your farms to raise the money, seein' you can knock the mortgage off so quick and have abundance left over, if you use your heads 'stead of your tired legs to make money out of your land."

Cyrus Bennington and Todd Stewart and Jim Shirley, with others, were sitting upright with alert faces now. Booms were making men rich all over Kansas. Why should prosperity not come to this valley as well? It was not impossible, surely. Only the unpleasant memory of Champers' holding back the supplies in the days when the gra.s.shopper was a burden would intrude on the minds of the company tonight. Champers was shrewd to remember also, and he played his game daringly as well as cautiously.

"Maybe some of you fellows haven't felt right toward me sometimes," he said. "I hate to tell it now, but justice is justice. The truth is, it was a friend of yours who advised me not to let any supplies come your way, time of the gra.s.shopper raid. I listened to him then and didn't know no better'n to be run by him till I see his scheme to kill Wykerton an' build a town for hisself. He'll deny it now, declare he never done it, and he'll not do a thing for your town down here. See if he does. But it's Gawd's truth, he held me back so's he could run you his way. It's your turn to listen to me now and believe me, too."

And well they listened, especially the men who still owed John Jacobs for the loan of 1874.