Winning the Wilderness Part 52

And it was Rosie Gimpke, whom John Jacobs called the Wykerton W. C. T. U., who swiftly put the word to him that her grandfather was again defying the law and menacing the public welfare.

Unfortunately, the messenger who served Rosie in this emergency was overtaken by Hans and forced to divulge his mission, threatened with dire evils if he said a word to Rosie about Hans having halted him, and urged to go with all haste on his errand, and to be sure of the reward, a ticket to the coming circus and two dishes of ice cream from the Wyker eating house, as per Rosie's promise.

The boy hastened from the grinning Hans and did his errand, and afterward held his peace, so far as Rosie was concerned. But he stupidly unloaded his message and Hans' interference and threats to John Jacobs as an outsider whom the Wyker family rows could not touch, and had another dish of ice cream at Jacobs' expense.

This messenger was able, for he brought the word to Rosie that John Jacobs would come to his Little Wolf ranch the next day, and late in the evening drop into Wykerton unexpectedly, where he knew Rosie would give him easy access to the "blind tiger" of the Wyker House. The boy carried a message also to Darley Champers to meet Jacobs at the top of the hill above Little Wolf where the trail with the scary little twist wound down by the opening to the creek, beyond which the Gimpke home was hidden. Then Hans Wyker, with threats of withholding the circus ticket and the ice cream, was told both messages just as they had been given to him for Rosie and Champers.

Hans, for reasons of his own, hurried out of Wykerton and took the first train to Kansas City.

All this happened on the day that Darley Champers had made his trip to the Cloverdale Ranch. The fine spring weather of the morning leaped to summer heat in the afternoon, as often happens in the plains country. On the next day the heat continued, till late in the afternoon a vicious black storm cloud swirled suddenly up over the edge of the horizon, defying the restraining call of the three headlands to sheer off to the south, as storms usually sheered, and burst in fury on the Gra.s.s River Valley, extending east and north until the whole basin drained by Big Wolf was threshed with a cyclone's anger.

Darley Champers sat half asleep in his office on the afternoon of this day. His coat and vest were flung on a chair, his collar was on the floor under the desk, his sleeves were rolled above his elbows. The heat affected his big bulky frame grievously. The front door was closed to keep out the afternoon glare, but the rear door, showing the roomy back yard, was wide open, letting in whatever cool air might wander that way.

Darley was half conscious of somebody's presence as he dozed. He dreamed a minute or two, then suddenly his eyes snapped open just in time to see Thomas Smith entering through the rear doorway.

"How do you do?" The voice was between a whine and a snarl.

Champers stared and said nothing.

"It's too hot to be comfortable," Smith said, seating himself opposite Champers, "but you're looking well."

"You're not," Champers thought.

Thomas Smith was not looking well. Every mark of the down-hill road was on him, to the last and surest mark of poverty. The hang-dog expression of the face with its close-set eyes and crooked scar above them showed how far the evil life had robbed the man of power.

"I got in here yesterday morning, and you went out of town right away,"

Smith began.

"Yes, I seen you, and left immediately," Champers replied.

"Why do you dodge me? Is it because you know I can throw you? Or is it because I got full here once and beat you up a bit over in Wyker's place?" Smith asked smoothly, but with something cruel leaping up in his eyes.

"I didn't dodge you. I had business to see to and I hurried to it, so I wouldn't miss you this afternoon," Champers declared. "What do you want now?"

"Money, and I'm going to have it," Smith declared.

"Go get it, then!" Champers said coolly.

"You go get it for me, and go quick," Smith responded. "I'm in a bad fix, I needn't tell you. I've got to have money; it's what I live for."

"I believe you. It's all you ever did live for, and it's brought you where it'll bring any man danged soon enough who lives for it that way,"

Champers a.s.serted.

"Since when did you join the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation?" Smith asked blandly.

"Since day before yesterday."

In spite of himself, Darley Champers felt his face flush deeply. He had just responded to a solicitation from that organization, a.s.suring the solicitors that he "done it as a business man and not that he was any prayer meetin' exhorter, but the dollars was all cleaner'n a millionaire's, anyhow."

"I thought so," Smith went on. "Well, briefly, you have a good many things to keep covered, you know, and, likewise, so have your friends, the Shirleys. The girl paid about all the mortgage on that ranch, I find."

Darley Champers threw up his big hand.

"Don't bring her name in here," he demanded savagely.

"Oh, are you soft that way?" The sneer in the allusion was contemptible.

"All the better; you will get me some money right away. Why, I haven't let you favor me in a long time. You'll be glad to do it now. Let me show you exactly how."

He paused a moment and the two looked steadily at each other, each seeming sure of his ground.

"You will go to these Shirleys," Smith continued, all the hate of years making the name bitter to him, "and you'll arrange that they mortgage up again right away, and you bring me the money. They can easy get three thousand on that ranch now, it's so well set to alfalfa. Nothing else will do but just that."

"And if I don't go?" Darley Champers asked.

"Oh, you'll go. You don't want this Y. M. C. A. crowd to know all I can tell. No, you don't. And Jim Shirley and that girl Leigh don't want me to publish all I know about the father and brother, Tank. It might be hard on both of 'em. Oh, I've got you all there. You can't get away from me and think because I'm hard up I have lost my grip on you. _I'll never do that._ I can disgrace you all so Gra.s.s River wouldn't wash your names clean again. So run along. You and the Shirleys will do as I say. You don't _dare_ not to. And this pretty Leigh, such a gross old creature as you are fond of, she can work herself to skin and bone to pay off another mortgage to help Jim. Poor fellow can't work like most men, big as he is.

I remember when he got started wrong in his lungs back in Ohio when he was a boy. He blamed Tank for shutting him out in the cold one night, or something like it. That give him his start. He always blamed Tank for everything. Why, he and Tank had a fight the last time they were together, and he nearly broke his brother's arm off--"

"Oh, shut up," Champers snapped out.

"Well, be active. I'll give you till tomorrow night; that's ample," Smith snapped back. "Hans and you are all the people in town who know I'm here now except the fat woman who waits on the table at Wyker's. I'm lying low right now, but I won't stay hid long; Wyker'll keep me over one more day, I reckon. Even he's turned against me when I've got no money to loan him, but I'll be on my feet again."

"Say, Smith, come in tomorrow night, but don't hurry away now." The big man's tone was too level to show which way his meaning ran. "I'd like to go into matters a little with you."

Smith settled back in his chair and waited with the air of one not to be coaxed.

"You are right in sayin' I'd like to hide some transactions. Not many real estate men went through the boom days here who don't need to feel that way. We was all property mad, and you and me and Wyker run our bluff same as any of 'em, an' we busted the spirit of the law to flinders. And our givin' and gettin' deeds and our buyin' tax t.i.tles an' forty things we done, was so irregular it might or mightn't stand in court now, dependin'

altogether on how good a lawyer for technicalities we was able to employ.

We know'd the game we was playin', too, and excused ourselves, thinkin'

the Lord wouldn't find us special among so many qualified for the same game. Smith, I know danged well I'm not so 'shamed of that as I should be.

The thing that hurts me wouldn't be cards for you at all. It's the brutal, inhumane things no law can touch me for; it's trying to do honest men out'n their freeholds; it's holdin' back them gra.s.shopper sufferer supplies, an' havin' the very men I robbed treatin' me like a gentleman now, that's cutting my rhinoceros hide into strips and hangin' it on the fence. But you can't capitalize a thing like that in your business."

"Well, I know what I can do."

"As to what you can do to me, you've run that bluff till it's slick on the track. And I've know'd it just as long as you have, anyhow. Here's my particular stunt with you. I had business East in '96, time of the big May flood, and I run down to Cloverdale, Ohio, for a day. The waters was up higher'n they'd been know'd for some years."

Thomas Smith had stiffened in his chair and sat rigidly gripping the arms.

But Champers seemed not to notice this as he continued:

"The fill where the railroad cuts acrost the old Aydelot farm was washed out and kep' down the back water from floodin' the low ground. But naturally it washed out considerable right there."

Smith's face was deadly pale now, with the crooked scar a livid streak across his forehead. Champers deliberated before he went on. All his bl.u.s.tering method disappeared and he kept to the even tone and unruffled demeanor.

"The danged little crick t'other side of town got rampageous late in the afternoon, and the whole crowd that had watched Clover Crick all day went pellmellin' off to see new sights, leavin' me entirely alone by the washout. I remember what you said about pretendin' to commit yourself to your Maker there in an agreement between you as cashier an' Tank Shirley, an' the place interested me a lot."

A finer-fibred man could hardly have resisted the agonized face of Thomas Smith. A cowardly nature would have feared the anger back of it.

"It was gettin' late and pretty cloudy still, and n.o.body by, an' I staid round, an' staid round, when just at the right place the bank broke away and I see the body of a man--just the skeleton mainly, right where you didn't commit your pretended suicide. Somebody committed it there for you evidently. There was only a few marks of identification, a big set ring with a jagged break in the set that swiped too swift acrost a man's face might leave a ugly scar for life, and if the fellow tried too hard to drown hisself he might wrench a man's right arm so out o' plum he couldn't never do much signin' his name again. I disposed of the remains decent as I could, for Doc Carey was leisurely coming down National pike from Jane Aydelot's, an' it was gettin' late, an' no cheerful plate nor job in a crowd in sunshiny weather, let alone there in the dusk of the evening.

Wow! I dreamt of that there gruesome thing two weeks. I throwed the shovel in the crick. Would you like me to show you where to go to dig, so's you can be sure your plan with Tank Shirley worked and you didn't drown, after all? And are you sure you ain't been misrepresenting things to me a little as agent for Tank Shirley? Are you right sure you ain't Tank Shirley himself? I've kep' still for four years, not to save you nor myself, but to keep Leigh Shirley's name from bein' dragged into court 'longside a name like yours or mine. I never misuse the women, no matter how tricky I am with men."