THE MAIN CHANCE

THE MAIN CHANCE
BY MEREDITH NICHOLSON

ILLUSTRATED BY
HARRISON FISHER

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1903
The Bobbs-Merrill Company

May

PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

TO
E. K. N.
WHO WILL REMEMBER AND
UNDERSTAND

CONTENTS

THE MAIN CHANCE

CHAPTER I A NEW MAN IN TOWN

"Well, sir, they say I'm crooked!"

William Porter tipped back his swivel chair and placidly puffed a cigar as he watched the effect of this declaration on the young man who sat talking to him.

"That's said of every successful man nowadays, isn't it?" asked John Saxton.

The president of the Clarkson National Bank ignored the question and rolled his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, as he waited for his words to make their full impression upon his visitor.

"They say I'm crooked," he repeated, with a narrowing of the eyes, "but they don't say it very loud!"

Porter kicked his heels together gently and watched his visitor with eyes in which there was no trace of humor; but Saxton saw that he was expected to laugh.

"No, sir;" the banker continued, "they don't say it very loud, and I guess they don't any of them want to have to prove it. I'm afraid those Boston friends of yours have given us up as a bad lot," he went on, waiving the matter of his personal rectitude and returning to the affairs of his visitor; "and they've sent you out here to get their money, and I don't blame them. Well, sir; that money's got to come out in time, but it's going to take time and money to get it."

"I believe they sent me because I had plenty of time," said Saxton, smiling.

"Well, we want to help you win out," returned Porter. "And now what can I do to start you off?" he asked briskly. "Have you got a place to stay? Well, sir, I warn you solemnly against the hotels in this town; but we've got a fairly decent club up here, and you'd better stay there till you get acquainted. Been to breakfast? Breakfast on the train? That's good. Just look over the papers till I get rid of these letters and I'll be free."

Porter turned to his desk and replaced the eye-glasses which he had dropped while talking. There was an air of great alertness in his small, lean figure as he pushed buttons to summon various members of the clerical force and rapidly dictated terse telegrams and letters to a stenographer. He continued to smoke, and he shifted constantly the narrow-brimmed, red-banded straw hat that he wore above his shrewd face. It was an agreeable face to see, of a type that is common wherever the North-Irish stock is found in America, and its characteristics were expressed in his firm, lean jaw and blue eyes, and his reddish hair and mustache, through which there were streaks of gray. He wore his hair short, but it was still thick, and he combed it with precision. His clothes fitted him; he wore a bright cravat, well tied, and his shoes were carefully polished. Saxton was impressed by the banker's perfect confidence and ease; it manifested itself in the way he tapped buttons to call his subordinates, or turned to satisfy the importunities of the desk-telephone at his elbow.

John Saxton had been sent to Clarkson by the Neponset Trust Company of Boston to represent the interests of a group of clients who had made rash investments in several of the Trans-Missouri states. Foreclosure had, in many instances, resulted in the transfer to themselves of much town and ranch property which was, in the conditions existing in the early nineties, an exceedingly slow asset. It was necessary that some one on the ground should care for these interests. The Clarkson National Bank had been exercising a general supervision, but, as one of the investors told his fellow sufferers in Boston, they should have an agent whom they could call home and abuse, and here was Saxton, a conscientious and steady fellow, who had some knowledge of the country, and who, moreover, needed something to do. Saxton's acquaintance with the West had been gained by a bitter experience of ranching in Wyoming. A blizzard had destroyed his cattle, and the subsequent depression in land values in the neighborhood of his ranch had left him encumbered with a property for which there was no market. His friends had been correct in the assumption that he needed employment, and he was, moreover, glad of the chance to get away from home, where the impression was making headway that he had failed at something in the vague, non-interest-paying West. When, on his return from Wyoming, it became necessary for his former acquaintances to identify him to one another, they said, with varying degrees of kindness, that John had gone broke at ranching; and if they liked him particularly, they said it was too bad; if they had not known him well in his fortunate days, they mildly intimated that a fool and his money found quicker divorce at ranching than in any other way. Most of Saxton's friends and contemporaries had made good beginnings at home, and he felt, unnecessarily perhaps, that his failure made him a marked man among them.

"Now," said Porter presently, scrutinizing a telegram carefully before signing it, "I'll take you up to the office we've been keeping for your people, and show you what it looks like. Some of these things are run as corporations, you understand, and in our state corporations have to maintain a tangible residence."

"So that the sheriff may find them more easily," added Saxton.

"Well, that's no joke," returned Porter, as they entered the elevator from the outer hall; "but they don't necessarily have much office furniture to levy on."

The room proved to be a small one at the top of the building. On the ground-glass door was inscribed "The Interstate Irrigation Company." The room contained a safe, a flat-top desk and a few chairs. Several maps hung on the wall, some of them railroad advertisements, and others were engineers' charts of ranch lands and irrigation ditches.

"It ain't pretty," said Porter critically, "but if you don't like it you can move when you get ready. The bank is your landlord, and we don't charge you much for it. You've doubtless got your inventory of stuff with you, and here in the safe you'll find the accounts of these companies, copies of public records relating to them, and so on." As Porter talked he stood in the middle of the room with his hands in his pockets, and puffed at a cigar, throwing his head back in an effort to escape the smoke. He stood with one foot on a chair and pushed his hat away from his forehead as he continued reflectively: "You're going up against a pretty tough proposition, young man. You'll hear a hard luck story wherever you go out here just now; people who owe your friends money will be mighty sorry they can't pay. Many of the ranch lands your people own will be worth something after a while. That Colorado irrigation scheme ought to pan out in time, and I believe it will; but you've got to nurse all these things. Make your principals let you alone. Those fellows get in a hurry at the wrong time,—that's my experience with Eastern investors. Tell them to go to Europe,—get rid of them for a while, and make them give you a chance to work out their money for them. They're not the only pebbles." A slight smile seemed to creep over a small area about the banker's lips, but his cigar only partly revealed it. His eyes rarely betrayed him, and the monotonous drawl of his voice was without humorous intention.

"I'll send the combination of the safe up by the boy," he said, moving toward the door, "and you can get a bird's-eye view of the situation before lunch. Mr. Wheaton, our cashier, is away to-day, but he's familiar with these matters and will be glad to help you when he gets home. He'll be back to-night. When you get stuck call on us. And drop down about twelve thirty and go up to the club for lunch. Take it easy; you can't do it all in one day," he added.

"I hope I shan't be a nuisance to you," said the younger man. "I'm going to fight it out on the best lines I know how,—if it takes several summers."

"Well, it'll take them all right," said Porter, sententiously.

Left to himself Saxton examined his new quarters, found a feather duster hanging in a corner and brushed the dirt from the scanty furniture. This done, he drew a pipe from his pocket, filled it from his tobacco pouch and sat down by the open window, through which the breeze came cool out of the great valley; and here he could see, far over the roofs and spires of the town, the bluffs that marked the broad bed of the tawny Missouri. He was not as buoyant as his last words to the banker implied. Here he was, he reflected, a man of good education, as such things go, who had lost his patrimony in a single venture. He had been sent, partly out of compassion, he felt, to take charge of investments that were admitted to be almost hopelessly bad. The salary promised would provide for him comfortably, and that was about all; anything further would depend upon himself, the secretary of the Neponset Trust Company had told him; it would, he felt, depend much more particularly on the making over by benign powers of the considerable part of the earth's surface in which his principals' money lay hidden. As his eyes wandered to one of the office walls, the black trail of a great transcontinental railroad caught and held his attention. On one of its northern prongs lay the region of his first defeat.

"Three years of life are up there," he meditated, "and all my good dollars are scattered along the right of way." Many things came back to him vividly—how the wind used to howl around the little ranch house, and how he rode through the snow among his dying cattle in the great storm that had been his undoing. With his eyes still resting on the map, he recurred to his early school days and to his four years at Harvard. There was a burden of heartache in these recollections. Incidents of the unconscious brutality of playmates came back to him,—the cruel candor with which they had rejected him from sports in which proficiency, and not mere strength or zeal, was essential. He had enjoyed at college no experience of success in any of those ways which mark the undergraduate for brief authority or fame. He had never been accepted for the crew nor for the teams that represented the university on diamond or gridiron, though he had always participated in athletics, and was possessed of unusual strength. None of the professions had appealed to him, and he had not heeded his father's wish that he enter the law. The elder Saxton, who was himself a lawyer of moderate success, died before John's graduation; he had lost his mother in his youth, and his only remaining relative was a sister who married before he left college.

A review of these brief and discouraging annals did not hearten him; but he fell back upon the better mood with which he had begun the morning; he had a new chance, and he proposed to make the best of it. He put aside his coat and hat, lighted the pipe which he had been holding in his hand, and opened his desk. The banker had sent up the combination of the safe, as he had promised, and Saxton began inspecting its contents and putting his office in order.

"I'm in for a long stay," he reflected. "Watson and Terrell and those other fellows are just about reaching Park Street, perhaps with virtuous thoughts of having given me a job, if they haven't forgotten me. It's probably a pleasant day in Boston, with the flowers looking their best in the Gardens; but this is better than my Wyoming pastures, anyhow." The books and papers began to interest him, and he was soon classifying the properties that had fallen to his care. He was one of those fortunate individuals who are endowed with a capacity for complete absorption in the work at hand,—the frequent possession of persons, who, like Saxton, enjoy immunity from visits of the alluring will-o'-the-wisps that beguile geniuses. He was so deeply occupied that he did not mark the flight of time and was surprised when a boy came with a message from Porter that he was ready to go to luncheon.

"Yon mustn't overdo the thing, young man," said the banker amiably, as he closed his desk. "Don't you adopt our Western method of working all the hours there are. I do it now because my neighbors and customers would talk about me if I didn't, and say that I had lost my grip in my old age."

They started up the sloping street, which was intensely hot.

"In my last job I worked twenty hours a day," said Saxton, "and lost money in spite of it."

"You mean up in Wyoming; the Neponset people wrote me that you were a reformed cattleman."

"Yes, I was winter-killed at the business." He assumed that Porter would not care particularly for the details of his failure. Western men are, he knew, much more tolerant of failure than Eastern men; but he was relieved to hear the banker drawling on with a comment on Clarkson, its commercial history and prospects.

At the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Clarkson Chamber of Commerce, the local boy orator, who made a point of quoting Holy Writ in his speeches, spoke of Clarkson as "no mean city," just as many another orator has applied this same apt Pauline phrase to many another metropolis. The business of Clarkson had to do with primary employments and needs. The cattle of a thousand hills and of many rough pastures were gathered here; and here wheat and corn from three states were assembled. In exchange for these products, Clarkson returned to the country all of the necessities and some of the luxuries of life. Several important railway lines had their administrative offices here. Ores were brought from the Rockies, from Mexico, and even from British Columbia, to the great smelters whose smoke and fumes hung over the town. Neither coal, wood nor iron lay near at hand, so that manufacturing was almost unknown; but the packing-houses and smelters gave employment to many laborers, drawn in great measure from the Slavonic races.

Varney Street cut through the town at right angles to the river, bisecting the business district. It then gradually threw off its commercial aspect until at last it was lined with the homes of most of Clarkson's wealthiest citizens. An exaggerated estimate of the value of corner lots had caused many of them to be left vacant; and weeds and signboards exercised eminent domain between booms. North and south of Varney Street were other thoroughfares which strove to be equally fashionable, and here citizens had sometimes built themselves houses that were, as they said, as good as anything in Varney Street. Everywhere ragged edges remained; old unpainted frame buildings lingered in blocks that otherwise contained handsome houses. Sugar-loaf cubes of clay loomed lonesomely, with houses stranded high on their summits, where property owners had been too poor to cut down their bits of earth to conform to new levels. The clay banks were ugly, but they were doomed to remain until the next high tide of prosperity.

The Clarkson Club stood at the edge of the commercial district, and its Milwaukee brick walls rose hot and staring in the July sun as Porter and Saxton approached.

"Here we are," said Porter, leading the way into the wide hall. "We'll arrange about your business relations later. There's a very bad lunch ready upstairs, and we'll go against that first."

There were only a few men in the dining-room, seated at a round table. Porter exchanged salutations with them as he passed on to a small table at the end of the room. Those who were of his own age called Porter, "Billy," and he included them all in the careless nod of old acquaintance. Porter offered Saxton the wine card, which the young man declined with instinctive knowledge that he was expected to do so. They took the simple table d'hôte, which was, as Porter had predicted, very bad. The banker ate little and carried the burden of the conversation.

They went from the table for an inspection of the club, and arranged with the clerk in the office for a room on the third floor, which Mr. Saxton was to have, so Porter told the clerk, until he didn't want it any more.

"It's all right about the rules," he said; "if the house committee kick about it, send them to me." They stopped in the lounging room, where the men from the round table were now talking or looking at newspapers. Porter introduced Saxton to all of them, stating in his humorous way, with variations in every case, that this was a new man in town; that victims were scarce in hard times, and that they must make the most of him. Several of the men who shook hands with Saxton were railroad officials, but nearly every line of business was represented. All seemed to wear their business consciously, and Saxton was made aware of their several employments in one way or another as he stood talking to them. He felt that their own frankness should elicit a response on his part, and he stated that he had come to represent the interests of "Eastern people,"—a phrase which, in that territory, has weight and significance. This, he thought, should be sufficiently explicit; and he felt that his interlocutors were probably appraising him with selfish eyes as a possible customer or client. However, they were very cordial, and presently he found that they were chaffing one another for his benefit, and trying to bring him within the arc of their own easy comradeship.

"If you're going with me," said Porter at his elbow, "you'd better get a move on you." But the whole group went out together, Porter leaving Saxton to the others, with that confidence in human friendliness which is peculiar to the social intercourse of men. They made him feel their honest wish to consider him one of themselves, making a point of saying to him, as they dropped out one by one, that they hoped to see him often. Porter led the way back down Varney Street, smoking meditatively and carrying his hat in his hand. He said at the bank door: "Now you make them give you what you want at the club, and if they don't, you want to raise the everlasting Nick. I've got a house up here on Varney Street,—come up for dinner to-morrow night and we'll see if we can't raise a breeze for you. It's hotter than Suez here, and you'd better take my advice about starting in slow."

He went into the bank, leaving a trail of smoke behind him; and Saxton took the elevator for his own office.

CHAPTER II WARRICK RARIDAN

The Clarkson Club was, during most of the day, the loneliest place in town. Only a few of the sleeping rooms were occupied regularly, and luncheon was the one incident of the day that drew any considerable number of men to the dining-room. The antlered heads of moose and elk were hung in the hall, and colored prints of English hunting scenes and bad oil portraits traits of several pioneers were scattered through the reading and lounging rooms. There was a room which was referred to flatteringly as the library, but its equipment of literature consisted of an encyclopedia and of novels which had been contributed by members at times coincident with housecleaning seasons at home. Clarkson business men who maintained non-resident memberships in Chicago or St. Louis clubs, said, in excusing the poor patronage of the Clarkson Club, that Clarkson was not a club town, like Kansas City or Denver, where there were more unattached men with money to spend.

Saxton was not over-sensitive, but the stiffness and hardness of the club house were not without their disagreeable impression on him as he sat at dinner toward the close of his first day in Clarkson. Two of the men to whom Porter had introduced him at noon proved to be fellow lodgers, and they exchanged greetings with him from the table where they sat together. They unsociably read their evening papers as they ate, and left before he finished. He had lighted a cigar over his coffee, and was watching the fading colors of a brilliant sunset when a young man appeared at the door, and after a brief inspection of Saxton's back walked over to him.

"Aren't you Mr. Saxton? I thought you must be he. My name is Raridan. Don't let me break in on your meditations," he added, taking the chair which the waiter drew out for him. "I met Mr. Porter a while ago, and he adjured me on penalties that I won't name to be good to you. I don't know whether this is obeying orders,"—he broke off in a laugh,—"that depends on the point of view." He had produced a cigarette case from his pocket and rolled a white cylinder between his palms before lighting it. As the flame leaped from the match, Saxton noted the young man's thin face, his thick, curling dark hair, his slight mustache, the slenderness of his fingers. The eyes that lay back of rimless glasses were almost too fine for a man; but their gentleness and kindliness were charming.

"You are guilty of a very Christian act," Saxton said. "I was just wondering whether, after the sun had gone down behind that ridge over there, the world would still be going round."

"The world never stops entirely here," returned Raridan, "but the motion sometimes gets very slow. Mr. Porter tells me that you're to be one of us. Let me congratulate us,—and you!"

"I'm not so sure about you," rejoined Saxton. "At my last stopping place in the West they had a way of getting rid of undesirable members of the community, and I've never got over being nervous. But that was Wyoming. I'm sure you're more civilized here."

"Not merely civilized; we are civilization! You see I'm a native, and devoted to the home sod. My father was one of the first settlers. I never knew why," he laughed again—it was a pleasant laugh—"but I've tried to live up to my duties as one of the first Caucasians born in the county. Some day I'll be exhibited at the State Fair and little children will look at me with awe and admiration."

"That makes me feel very humble. I'm almost afraid to tell you that I'm a native of Boston, with a long line of highly undistinguished and terribly conventional ancestors back of me. My father was never west of Albany; my mother was never in a sleeping-car. But I'm not a tenderfoot. I rode the initiating bronco in Wyoming through all the degrees; and a cowboy once shot at me on his unlucky day."

"Oh, your title's clear. That record gives you all the rights of a native."

Raridan waved away the waiter who had been hovering near, and who now went over to the electric switch and threatened them with light.

"That's too good to lose," Raridan said, nodding toward the west in explanation.

Warrick Raridan was, socially speaking, the most available man in the Clarkson Blue Book. He was a graduate in law who did not practise, for he had, unfortunately, been left alone in the world at twenty-six, with an income that seemed wholly adequate for his immediate or future needs. He maintained an office, which was fairly well equipped with the literature of his profession, but this was merely to take away the reproach of his busier fellow citizens; it was not thought respectable to be an idler in Clarkson, even on reputable antecedents and established credit. But Raridan's office was useful otherwise than in providing its owner with a place for receiving his mail. It was the rendezvous for a variety of committees to which he was appointed by such unrelated bodies as the Clarkson Dramatic Club and the Diocesan Board of Missions of the Episcopal Church. He had never, by any chance, been pointed to as a model young man, but religious matters interested him sporadically, and he was referred to facetiously by his friends, when his punctilious religious observances were mentioned, as a fine type of the "cheerful Christian." He appeared every Sunday at the cathedral, which was the fashionable church in Clarkson, where he passed the plate for the alms and oblations of the well-dressed congregation; and he said of himself, with conscious humor, that he thought he did it rather well.

He was capable of quixotism of the most whimsical sort. He had, for a year, taken his meals at a cheap boarding-house in order that he might maintain two Indian boys in school. He was not at all aggrieved when, at the end of the first year, they ran away and resumed tribal relations with their brethren. He chaffed himself about it to his friends.

"It was wrong for me," he would say, "to try to pervert the tastes of those young savages. I nearly ruined my own digestion to buy them white man's luxuries; I wore out my old clothes that they might not go naked; and all they learned was to smoke cigarettes."

It was not enough to say that Warry Raridan could lead a german or tie an Ascot tie better than any other man on the Missouri River; for he was also the best informed man in that same strenuous valley concerning the traditions of the English stage, and was a fairly good actor himself, as amateurs go. He had an almost fatal cleverness, which made him impatient of the restraints of college; and he left in his sophomore year owing to difficulties with the mathematical requirements. Good books had abounded in his father's house, and he was from boyhood a persistent, though erratic reader. He threw himself with enthusiasm into the study of the rise of monastic orders; and from this he changed lightly to the newest books on psychology. There were many ways in which he could be entertaining. He had a slight literary gift, which he cultivated for his own amusement. His humor was fine and keen, and he occasionally wrote screeds for the local papers, or mailed, apropos of something or nothing, pleasant jingles to his intimate friends.

No Clarkson hostess felt that a visiting girl had received courteous attention unless she carried home a portfolio of verses written in her honor by Warry Raridan. He gave, indeed, an impression of great frivolity, but there were people who took him seriously, and lawyers who knew him well said that he might win success in his profession if he would apply himself. He had once appeared for the people in a suit to compel the street-railway company to pave certain streets, as provided by the terms of its franchise, and had gained his point against the best lawyers in the state. This accomplished, he refused an appointment as local counsel for a great railway, and with characteristic perverseness spent the following summer managing an open-air mission for poor children.

Saxton was greatly amused and entertained by Raridan. Even those of his fellow townsmen who did not wholly approve Warry Raridan, admitted his entertaining qualities; and Saxton, who was painfully conscious of his own shortcomings and knew that he had not usually been considered worth cultivating, found himself responding with unwonted lightness to Raridan's inconsequential talk. Few people had ever thought it necessary to take pains with John Saxton, and he greatly enjoyed the novelty of this intercourse with a man of his own age who was not a bore. The bores, as Saxton remembered from his college days, had taken advantage of his good nature and marked him for their own; and with a keen realization of this he had often wondered in bitterness whether they did not classify him correctly.

"I'll wager that if you stay here a year you'll never leave," said Raridan, as they went downstairs together. "I've been about a good deal, and know that we who live here miss a lot of comfort and amusement which go as a matter of course in older towns. But there's a roominess and expansiveness about things out here that I like, and I believe most men who strike it early enough like it, and are lonesome for it if they go away. These people here think I stay because my few business interests are here. The truth is that I've tried running away, but after I've spent a week east of the Alleghanies, I'm sated with the fleshpots and pine for the wilderness. Why, I go to the stockyards now and then just to see the train-loads of steers come in. I get sensations out of the rush and drive of all this that I wouldn't take a good deal for."

"I think I understand how you feel about it," said Saxton, looking more closely at this young man, who was not ashamed to mention his sensations of sentiment to a stranger. "There were times in Wyoming when Western life seemed pretty arid, but when I went back to Boston I was homesick for Cheyenne."

"That's a far cry, from Boston to Cheyenne," said Raridan, laughing. He began again volubly: "A good deal depends, I suppose, on which end you cry from. There's a lot of talk these days about the nouveaux riches by people who haven't any more French than that. We are advised by a fairly competent poet that men may climb on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things; but if they climb on the pickled remains of the common or garden pig I don't see anything ignoble about it. I'd a lot rather ascend on a pyramid of Minnehaha Hams than on my dead self, which I hope to avoid using for step-ladder purposes as long as possible. The people here are human beings, and they're all good enough to suit me. I'd as lief be descended from a canvased ham as an Astor peltry or a Vanderbilt steamboat. And I'm tired of the jokes in the barber-shop comic weeklies, about the rich Westerners who make a vulgar display of themselves in New York. If we do it, it's merely because we're doing in Rome as the Romans do. These same shampoo and hair-cut humorists are unable to get away from their jests about the homicidal tendencies of Western barkeepers and the woolliness of the cowboys. Those anemic commuters down there know no higher joy than a Weber & Fields matinee or a Rogers Brothers on the Bronx first-night. Sometimes I feel moved to grow a line of whiskers and add my barbaric yawp to the long howl of the Populist wolf. But, you know," he added, suddenly lowering his voice, "I reserve the right to abuse my fellow citizens when I love them most. I tore Populism to tatters last fall in a few speeches they let me make in the back counties. Our central committee hadn't anything to lose out there. That's why they sent me!"

Saxton was walking beside Raridan in the lower hall. He felt an impulse to express gratitude for his rescue from the loneliness of the twilight; but Raridan, talking incessantly, and with hands thrust easily into his trousers' pockets, led the way into the reading-room.

"Hello, Wheaton, I didn't know you were at home," he called to a man who sat reading a newspaper, and who now rose on seeing a stranger with Raridan.

"This is Mr. Saxton, Mr. Wheaton."

"Oh, yes," said the man introduced as Wheaton. "I wondered whether I shouldn't see you here. Mr. Porter told me you had come."

"I've been bringing Mr. Saxton up to date in local history," said Raridan.

"Chiefly concerning yourself, I suppose," said Wheaton, with a smile that did not wholly succeed in being amiable.

"It isn't often I get a chance at a brand new man," Raridan ran on. "I've told the worst about you, so conduct yourself accordingly."

"Mr. Raridan's worst isn't very bad," said Saxton. "From his account of this town and its people, the place must be paradise and the inhabitants saints."

Raridan called for cigars, but Wheaton declined them.

"Remarkable fellow," said Raridan, busy with his match. "Paragon among our business men; exemplary habits, and so forth." He waved the smoking matchstick to imply virtues in Wheaton which it was unnecessary to mention.

Wheaton ignored Raridan's chaffing way. He seemed very serious, and had not much to say. He had just come home, from a tedious trip to the western part of the state, he said, on an errand for his bank. He was tall, slim and dark. There was a suggestion of sleepy indifference in his black eyes, though he had a well-established reputation for energy and industry. Saxton commented to himself that Wheaton's hands and feet were smaller than he thought becoming in a man.

"Mr. Porter told me you were quartered here. I hope they can make you comfortable. I'm personally relieved that you have come. Your Boston friends were getting very impatient with us. We shall do all in our power to aid you; but of course Mr. Porter has said all that to you." His smile was by a movement of the lips, and his eyes did not seem to participate in it. He did not refer again to possible business relations with Saxton, but turned the conversation into general channels. They sat together for an hour, Raridan, as was his way in any company, doing most of the talking. They seemed to have the club house to themselves. Now and then one of the negro servants came and looked in upon them sleepily. A clerk at the desk in the hall read in peace. A party of young people could be heard entering by the side door set apart for women; and muffled echoes of their gaiety reached the trio in the reading-room.

"That's back in the incurables' ward," said Raridan, in explanation to Saxton.

"It isn't nice of you to speak of the gentler sex in that way," admonished Wheaton.

"Oh, there are girls and girls," said Raridan wearily. "It does seem to me that Mabel Margrave is always hungry. Why can't she do her eating at home?"

"He's simply jealous," Wheaton remarked to Saxton. "He always acts that way when he hears a girl in the ladies' dining-room, and doesn't dare go back and break in on some other fellow's party."

"When you show signs of mental decay, it's time for us to go home, Wheaton." Raridan held out his hand to Saxton. "I'm glad you're here, and you may be sure we'll try to make you like us. Wheaton and I live in a barracks around the corner, with a few other homeless wanderers. An ill-favored thing,—but our own! I hope to see you there. Don't be afraid of the Chinaman at the door. My cell is up one flight and to the right."

"And don't overlook me there," Wheaton interposed. "I suppose we shall see you down town very often. Mr. Raridan is the only man in Clarkson who has no visible means of support. The rest of us are pretty busy; but that doesn't mean that we shan't be glad to see you at the Clarkson National."

"You see how intensely commercial he is," said Raridan. "He's talking for the bank, you notice, and not for himself."

"I'm sure he means both." Saxton had followed them to the front door, where they repeated their good nights; he then climbed slowly to his room. He had never before met a man so volatile and fanciful as Warrick Raridan. He felt the warmth and friendliness of Raridan's nature as people always did; Wheaton seemed cold and dull in comparison. Saxton unpacked his trunks and distributed his things about the room. His effects were simple, as befitted a man who was plain of mind and person. He had collected none of the memorabilia which young men usually have assembled at twenty-five. The furnishings of his dressing table and desk were his own purchases, or those of his sister, who was the only woman that had ever made him gifts. Having emptied his trunks and sent them to the storeroom above, he seated himself comfortably in a lounging chair and smoked a final pipe before turning in.

CHAPTER III SWEET PEAS

When he confided to John Saxton his belief that there were those among his fellow townsmen who thought him "crooked," William Porter had no serious idea that such was the case. He had, however, an impression that the term "crooked" implied a high degree of sagacity and shrewdness. He knew men in other cities whose methods were, to put it mildly, indirect, and their names were synonymous with success. It pleased him to think that he was of their order, and he was rich enough to indulge this idiosyncrasy without fear of the criticisms of his neighbors. It amused him to quiz customers of his bank, though he took care not to estrange them. While his fellow citizens never seriously reflected on his integrity, yet they did say that "Billy" Porter knew his business; that he was "on to his job"; or, that to get ahead of him one must "get up early in the morning". "Billy Porter's luck" was a significant phrase in Clarkson. Porter had occasionally scored phenomenal successes, until his legitimate credit as a man of business was reinforced by this reputation. He believed that he enjoyed the high favor of fortune, and it lent assurance to his movements.

Porter lived well, as became a first citizen of Clarkson. His house stood at the summit of a hill near the end of Varney Street, and the gradual slope leading up to it was a pretty park, whose lawn and shrubbery showed the intelligent care of a good gardener. The dry air was still hot as John Saxton climbed the cement walk which wound over the slope at the proper degree to bring the greatest comfort to pedestrians. The green of the lawn was grateful to Saxton's eyes, which dwelt with relief on the fine spray of the rotary sprinklers that hissed coolly at the end of long lines of hose. Interspersed among the indigenous scrub-oaks were elms, maples and cedars, and the mottled bark of white birches showed here and there. The lawn was broken by beds of cannas, and it was evident that the owner of the place had a taste for landscape gardening and spent his money generously in cultivating it. The house itself was of red brick dating from those years in which a Mansard roof and a tower were thought indispensable in serious domestic architecture. There was a broad veranda on the river side, accessible through French windows of the same architectural period.

A maid admitted Saxton and left him to find his own way into the drawing-room, through which a breeze was blowing pleasantly from across the valley. The ceilings in the house were high and the hardwood floors seemed inconsonant with them and had evidently been added at a later date. A white marble mantel and the grate beneath it were hidden by palms. Above the mantel was a large mirror framed in heavy gilt. A piano formed a barricade across the lower end of the room. One wall was covered with a wonderful old French tapestry depicting a fierce hand-to-hand battle in which the warriors and their horses were greatly confused.

Saxton sat in a deep wicker chair, mopping his forehead. He had spent a busy day, and it was with real satisfaction that he found himself in a cool house where the atmosphere of comfort and good taste brought ease to all his senses. He had not expected to find so pleasant a house; verily, the marks of philistinism were not upon it. It seemed to him unlikely that Porter maintained solitary state here, and he wondered who could be the other members of the household. The maid had disappeared into the silent depths of the house without waiting for his name, and did not return. His eyes moved again in leisurely fashion to the wall before him, and to the mirror, which reflected nothing of his immediate surroundings, but disclosed the shelves and books of a room on the opposite side of the hall.

He was amusing himself in speculations as to what manner of library a man like Porter would have, and whether he read anything but the newspapers, when the shadow of a young woman crept into the mirror; she stood placing flowers in a vase on a table in the center of the room. He thought for a moment that a figure from a painting had given a pretty head and a pair of graceful shoulders to the mirror. In the room where he sat the frames contained peasants in sabots, generous panels of Hudson River landscape, a Detaille and an Inness. He changed the direction of his eyes to inspect again the Brittany girl that stood looking out over the sea in the manner of Brittany girls in pictures. The girl in the mirror was not the same; moreover, he could hear her humming softly; her head moved gracefully; there was no question of her reality. Her hands had brought a bunch of sweet peas within the mirror's compass, and were detaching a part of them for the vase by which she stood. She hummed on in her absorption, bending again, so that Saxton lost sight of her; then she stood upright, holding the unused flowers as if uncertain what to do with them. The head flashed out of the mirror, which reflected again only the library shelves and books. Then he heard a light step crossing the hall, and the girl, still singing softly to herself, passed back of him to a little stand which stood by one of the drawing-room windows. The back of the wicker chair hid him; she was wholly unconscious that any one was there. The breath of the sweet peas which she was distributing suddenly sweetened the cool air of the room. Seeing that the girl did not know of his presence in the house, and that she would certainly discover him when she turned to go, he rose and faced her.

"I beg your pardon!"

"Oh!" The sweet peas fell to the floor, and the girl looked anxiously toward the hall door.

"I beg your pardon," Saxton repeated. "I think—I fear—I wasn't announced. But I believe that Mr. Porter is expecting me."

"Yes?" The girl looked at John for the first time. He was taking the situation seriously, and was sincerely sorry for having startled her. His breadth of shoulders was impressive; he was clad in gray homespun, and there seemed to be a good deal of it in the room. His smooth-shaven face was sunburned. She thought he might be an Englishman. He was of the big blond English type common in the American cattle country.

"Father will be here very soon, I think." She moved toward the door with dignity, ignoring the fallen flowers, and Saxton stepped forward and picked them up.

"Allow me." The girl took them from him, a little uncertainly and guardedly, then returned to the vase and placed the flowers in it.

"Thank you very much," she said. "I think I hear my father now." She went to the outer door and opened it, inclining her head slightly as she passed John, who also heard Mr. Porter's voice outside. He was remonstrating with the gardener about the position of the sprinklers, which he wished reset in keeping with ideas of his own.

"Well, Evelyn?" he said, as he came up the steps. Saxton could hear the young woman making an explanation in low tones to her father. He knew, of course, that she was telling him that some one was waiting, and Mr. Porter stood suddenly in the door with his hat still on his head.

"Well, this beats me," he began effusively, coming forward and wringing Saxton's hand. "This beats me! I'm not going to try to explain. I simply forgot, that's all." He took Saxton's arm and turned him toward the door where the girl still stood, smiling.

"Evelyn, this is Mr. Saxton. He's come to dine with us. Bless my soul! but I forgot all about it. See here, Evelyn, you've got to square this for me," he concluded, and pushed his hat back from his forehead as he appealed to her.

She came forward and shook hands with Saxton.

"I don't know how it can be 'squared.' This is only one of father's lapses, Mr. Saxton. You may be sure he didn't mean to do it."

"No, indeed," declared Porter, "but I'm ashamed of myself. Guess I'm losing my wits." He waved the young people to seats with his hat, as if anxious to have the apologies over as quickly as possible. "Positively no reflection,—no, sir. Why, the last time it happened—"

"A week ago to-night," his daughter interpolated.

"The victim was the lord mayor of somewhere, who was passing through town, and I asked him and his gang for dinner, and actually didn't telephone to the house about it until half-past five in the afternoon. I'm losing my wits, that's all." He continued to paint his social crimes, while his daughter disappeared to correct his latest error by having a plate laid for the unannounced guest. When she returned he left the room, but reappeared at the lower door of the drawing-room, still holding his hat, and exclaimed sharply: "Evelyn, I'm sure I must have told you about Mr. Saxton being here when we were talking of the Poindexter place last night. I told you some one was coming out to take charge of those things."

"Very well, father," she said patiently, turning toward him. He again vanished into the hall having, he thought, justified himself before his guest.

"This is one of our standing jokes, you see, and father feels that he must defend himself. I was away for so long and father lived down town until his domestic instinct has suffered."

"But I'm sure he hasn't lost his instinct of hospitality," said Saxton.

"No; but it's his instinct of consideration for the housekeeper that's blunted." She was still smiling over the incident in a way that had the effect of including Saxton as a party to the joke, rather than as its victim. He found himself feeling altogether comfortable and was able to lead off into a discussion of the heat and of the appearance of the grounds, which he pronounced charming.

"Oh, that's father's great delight," she said. "I tell him he's far more interested in the grounds than the house. He's an easy prey to the compilers of flower catalogues, and people who sell trees go to him first; then they never need to go any farther. He always buys them out!"

They were touching upon the beneficence of Arbor Day when Porter returned with an appearance of clean cuffs and without his hat, and launched into statistics as to the number of trees that had been planted in the state by school children during the past year. The maid came to announce dinner, and Porter talked on as he led the way to the dining-room. As they were taking their seats a boy of twelve took the place opposite Saxton.

"This is my brother Grant," said Miss Porter. The boy was shy and silent and looked frail. The efforts of his sister to bring him into the talk were fruitless. When his father or sister spoke to him it was with an accented kindness. He would not talk before a stranger; but his face brightened at the humor of the others.

There was a round table very prettily set with glass candlesticks at the four plates and a bowl of sweet peas in the center. Porter began a discussion of some problems relating to improvements and changes in the grounds, talking directly across to his daughter, as she served the soup. Her manner with him was very gentle. She added "father" to most of her sentences in addressing him, and there was a kind of caress in the word as she spoke it. Her head, whose outlines had seemed graceful to Saxton as he studied them in the mirror, was now disclosed fully in the soft candle-light of the table. She had a pretty way of bending forward when she spoke which was characteristic and quite in keeping with the frankness of her speech; there was no hint of coquetry or archness about her. Her eyes, which Saxton had thought blue in the drawing-room, were now gray by candle-light. She was very like her father; she had his clear-cut features, though softened and refined, and thoroughly feminine. His eyes were smaller, and there was a quizzical, furtive play of humor in them, which hers lacked. William Porter always seemed to be laughing at you; his daughter laughed with you. You might question the friendliness of her father's quiet joking sometimes, but there was nothing equivocal in her smile or speech.

A woman who is not too subservient to fashion may reveal a good deal of herself in the way she wears her hair. The straight part in Evelyn Porter's seemed to be akin to her clear, frank eyes, contributing to an impression of simplicity and directness. The waves came down upon her forehead and then retreated quickly to each side, as if they had been conscious intruders there, and were only secure when they found refuge in the knot that was gathered low behind. There was in her hair that pretty ripple which men are reluctant to believe is acquired by processes in which nature has little part. The result in Evelyn's case was to give the light a better playground, and it caught and brightened wherever a ripple held it. Her arms were bare from the elbow and there were suppleness and strength in their firm outlines; her hands were long and slender and had known vigorous service with racket and driver.

Porter was full of a scheme for planting a line of poplars around some lots, which, it seemed, he owned in another part of the town; but he dropped this during a prolonged absence of the waitress from the room, to ask where the girl had gone and whether there was going to be any more dinner.

"It's bad enough, child, for us to forget we've got a guest for dinner, but we needn't rub it in by starving him after he's at the table."

"There is food out there, father, if you'll abide in patience. This is a new girl and she's pretty green. She let Mr. Saxton in and then forgot to tell anybody he'd come." She wished to touch on this, without recurring to the awkward plight in which Saxton had been placed; and John now seized the chance to minimize it so that the incident might be closed.

"Oh, it was very flattering to me! She left me alone with an air that implied my familiar acquaintance with the house. It was much kinder than asking for credentials."

"You're not hard enough on these people, Evelyn," declared Porter. "That's something they didn't teach you at college. If you let the impression get out that you're easy, you'll never make a housekeeper. Fire them! fire them whenever you find they're no good!" He looked to Saxton for corroboration, with a severe air, as if this were something that masculine minds understood but which was beyond the reach of women.

When all were served he grew abstracted as he ate, and Saxton appealed to his hostess, as one college graduate may appeal to another, along the line of their college experiences. They had, it appeared, several acquaintances in common, and Saxon recalled that some of his classmates had often visited the college in which Miss Porter had been a student; and a little of the old ache crept into his heart as he remembered the ways in which the social side of college life had meant so much less to him than to most of the men he knew; but as she talked freely of her own experience, he found that her humor was contagious, and he even fell so far under its spell as to recount anecdotes of his own student life in which his part had not been heroic. Porter came back occasionally from the land of his commercial dreams, and they all laughed together at the climaxes. He presently directed the talk to the cattle business.

"You'd better get Mr. Saxton to tell you how much fun ranching is," he said, turning to the boy, who at once became interested in Saxton.

"I'm going to be a ranchman," the lad declared. "Father's going to buy me the Poindexter ranch some day."

"That's one of Mr. Saxton's properties. Maybe he'd trade it to you for a tin whistle."

"Is it as bad as that?" asked Saxton.

"Just wait until you see it. It's pretty bad."

"The house must have been charming," said Miss Porter.

"And that's about all it was," replied her father.

The dinner ended with a salad. This was not an incident but an event. The highest note of civilization is struck when a salad is dressed by a master of the chemistry of gastronomy. The clumsy and unworthy hesitate in the performance of this sacred rite, and are never sure of their proportions; the oil refuses intimacy with the vinegar, and sulks and selfishly creates little yellow isles for itself in the estranging sea of acid. The salt becomes indissoluble and the paprika is irrecoverable flotsam. The clove of garlic, always recalcitrant under clumsy handling, refuses to impart the merest hint of its wild tang, but the visible and tangible world reeks with it. It was a joy to John Saxton to see the deftness with which Evelyn Porter performed her miracle; he did not know much about girls, but he surmised that a girl who composed a salad dressing with such certainty did many things gracefully and well. There were no false starts, no "ohs" of regret and appeal, no questions of quantity. The light struck goldenly on the result as she poured it finally upon the crisply-curling lettuce leaves which showed discreetly over the edge of a deep Doulton bowl. It seemed to him high treason that his host should decline the dressing thus produced by an art which realized the dreams of alchemy, and should pour vinegar from the cruet with his own hand upon the helpless leaves.

Porter demanded cigars before the others had finished, and smoked over his coffee. He was in a hurry to leave, and at the earliest possible moment led the way to the veranda, picking up his hat as he stepped blithely along.

It was warmer outside than in, but Porter pretended that it was pleasanter out of doors, and insisted that there was always a breeze on the hill at night. He ran on in drawling monologue about the weather conditions, and how much cooler it was in Clarkson than at the summer places which people foolishly sought at the expense of home comforts. He made his shy boy report his experiences of the day. In addressing the lad he fell into his quizzical manner, but the boy understood it and yielded to it with the same submission that his father's customers adopted when they sought a loan and knew that Porter must prod them with immaterial questions, and irritate them with petty ironies, before he finally scribbled his initials in the corner of their notes and passed them over to the discount clerk.

Raridan appeared at the step presently. They all rose as he came up, and he said to Saxton as he shook hands with him last: "I see you've found the way to headquarters. All roads lead up to this Alpine height,—and I fear—I fear—that all roads lead down again," he added, with a doleful sigh, and laughed. He drew out his cigarettes and began making himself greatly at home. He assured Mr. Porter, with amiable insolence, that his veranda chairs were the most uncomfortable ones he knew, and went to fetch himself a better seat from the hall.

"Mr. Raridan likes to be comfortable," said Miss Porter in his absence.

"But he finds pleasure in making others comfortable, too," Saxton ventured.

"Oh, he's the very kindest of men," Miss Porter affirmed.

"What a nuisance you are, Warry," said Porter, as the young man fussed about to find a place for his chair. "We were all very easy here till you came. Even the breeze has died out."

"Father insists that there has been a breeze," said Miss Porter. "But it really has gone."

"Et tu, Brute? What we ought to do, Mr. Porter," said Raridan, who had at last settled himself, "is to organize a company to supply breezes. 'The Clarkson Breeze Company, Limited.' I can see the name on the factory now, in my mind's eye. We'd get up an ice trust first, then bring in the ice cream people and make vast fortunes out of it, besides becoming benefactors of our kind. The ice and the ice cream would pay for the cold air; our cold air service would bring a clear profit. We'd guarantee a temperature through the summer months of, say, seventy degrees."

"Then," Porter drawled, "the next thing would be to get the doctors in, for a pneumonia branch; and after that the undertakers would demand admission, and then the tombstone people. You're a bright young man, Warry. I heard you stringing that Englishman at the club the other day about your scheme for piping water from the Atlantic Ocean to irrigate the American desert, and he thought you meant it."

"Then we'll all suffer," Miss Porter declared, "for he'll go home and put it in a book, and there'll be no end of it."

Raridan was in gay spirits. He had come from a call on a young married couple who had just gone to housekeeping. He had met there a notoriously awkward young man, who moved through Clarkson houses leaving ruin in his wake.

"There ought to be some way of insuring against Whitely," said Raridan, musingly. "Perhaps a social casualty company could be formed to protect people from his depredations. You know, Mr. Saxton, they've really had to cut him off from refreshments at parties,—he was always spilling salads on the most expensive gowns in town. And these poor young married things, with their wedding loot huddled about them in their little parlors! There is a delightful mathematical nicety in the way he sweeps a tea table with his coat tails. He never leaves enough for a sample. But this was the worst! You know that polar bear skin that Mamie Shepard got for a wedding present; well, it makes her house look like a menagerie. Whitely was backing out—a thing I've begged him never to try—and got mixed up with the head of that monster; kicked all the teeth out, started to fall, gathered in the hat rack, broke the glass out of it, and before Shepard could head him off, he pulled down the front door shade."

"But Mr. Whitely sings beautifully," urged Miss Porter.

"He'd have to," said Warry, "with those feet."

"You needn't mind what Raridan says," Mr. Porter remarked. "He's very unreliable."

"The office of social censor is always an ungrateful one," Raridan returned, dolefully. "But I really don't know what you'd do without me here."

"I notice that you never give us a chance to try," said Mr. Porter, dryly.

"That is the unkindest cut; and in the shadow of your own house, too."

Saxton got up to go presently and Raridan rose with him, declaring that they had been terribly severe and that he could not be left alone with them.

"I hope you'll overlook that little slip of mine," said Mr. Porter, as he shook hands with Saxton. "You'd better not tell Raridan about it. It would be terrible ammunition in his hands."

"And we'll all do better next time," said Miss Porter; "so do come again to show that you don't treasure it against us."

"I don't know that anything's happened," pleaded John, "except that I've had a remarkably good time."

"I fear that's more generous than just; but the next time I hope the maid will do better."

"And next time I hope I shan't frighten you," Saxton went on. Raridan and Mr. Porter had walked down the long veranda to the steps, and Saxton and Miss Porter were following.

"Oh, but you didn't!" the girl laughed at him.

"But you dropped the flowers—"

"But you shouldn't have noticed! It wasn't gallant!"

They had reached the others, and Raridan broke in with his good night, and he and Saxton went down the walk together.

"They seem to have struck up an acquaintance," observed Mr. Porter, settling himself to a fresh cigar.

"Mr. Saxton is very nice," said Evelyn.

"Oh, he's all right," said her father, easily.

CHAPTER IV AT POINDEXTER'S

John Saxton trotted his pony through a broken gate into a great yard that had once been sown in blue grass, and at the center of which lay the crumbled ruins of a fountain. This was clearly no ordinary establishment, as he had been warned, and he was uncertain how to hail it. However, before he could make his presence known, a frowsy man in corduroy emerged from the great front door and came toward him.

"My name's Saxton, and you must be Snyder."

"Correct," said the man and they shook hands.

"Going to stay a while?"

"A day or two." John threw down the slicker in which he had wrapped a few articles from his bag at Great River, the nearest railway station.

"I got your letter all right," said Snyder. "Walk in and help yourself." He led the pony toward the outbuildings, while Saxton filled his pipe and viewed the pile before him with interest. He had been making a careful inspection of all the properties that had fallen to his care. This had necessitated a good deal of traveling. He had begun in Colorado and worked eastward, going slowly, and getting the best advice obtainable as to the value of his principals' holdings. Much of their property was practically worthless. Title had been gained under foreclosure to vast areas which had no value. A waterworks plant stood in the prairie where there had once been a Kansas town. The place was depopulated and the smokestack stood as a monument to blighted hopes. Ranch houses were inhabited by squatters, who had not been on his books at all, and who paid no tribute to Boston. He was viewed with suspicion by these tenants, and on inquiry at the county seats, he found generally that they were lawless men, and that it would be better for him to let them alone. It was patent that they would not pay rent, and to eject them merely in the maintenance of a principle involved useless expense and violence.

"This certainly beats them all," Saxton muttered aloud.

He had reached in his itinerary what his papers called the Poindexter property. He had found that the place was famous throughout this part of the country for the idiosyncrasies of its sometime owners, three young men who had come out of the East to show how the cattle business should be managed. They had secured an immense acreage and built a stone ranch house whose curious architecture imparted to the Platte Valley a touch of medievalism that was little appreciated by the neighboring cattlemen. One of the owners, a Philadelphian named Poindexter, who had a weakness for architecture and had studied the subject briefly at his university, contributed the buildings and his two associates bought the cattle. There were one thousand acres of rolling pasture here, much of it lying along the river, and a practical man could hardly have failed to succeed; but theft, disease in the herd and inexperience in buying and selling, had wrought the ranchmen's destruction. Before their money was exhausted, Poindexter and his associates lived in considerable state, and entertained the friends who came to see them according to the best usages of Eastern country life within, and their own mild approximation of Western life without. Tom Poindexter's preceptor in architecture, an elderly gentleman with a sense of humor, had found a pleasure which he hardly dared to express in the medieval tone of the house and buildings.

"All you need, Tom," he said, "to make the thing complete, is a drawbridge and a moat. The possibilities are great in the light of modern improvements in such things. An electric drawbridge, operated solely by switches and buttons, would be worth while." The folly of man seems to express itself naturally in the habitations which he builds for himself; the folly of Tom Poindexter had been of huge dimensions and he had built a fairly permanent monument to it. He and his associates began with an ambition to give tone to the cattle business, and if novel ideas could have saved them, they would not have failed. One of their happy notions was to use Poindexter's coat of arms as a brand, and this was only abandoned when their foreman declared that no calf so elaborately marked could live. They finally devised an insignium consisting of the Greek Omega in a circle of stars.

"There's a remnant of the Poindexter herd out there somewhere," Wheaton had said to Saxton. "The fellow Snyder, that I put in as a caretaker, ought to have gathered up the loose cattle by this time; that's what I told him to do when I put him there."

Saxton turned and looked out over the rolling plain. A few rods away lay the river, and where it curved nearest the house stood a group of cottonwoods, like sentinels drawn together for colloquy. Scattered here and there over the plain were straggling herds. On a far crest of the rolling pastures a lonely horseman paused, sharply outlined for a moment against the sky; in another direction, a blur drew his eyes to where a group of the black Polled Angus cattle grazed, giving the one blot of deep color to the plain.

Snyder reappeared, and Saxton followed him into the house.

"It isn't haunted or anything like that?" John asked, glancing over the long hall.

"No. They have a joke about that at Great River. They say the only reason is that there ain't any idiot ghosts."

There was much in the place to appeal to Saxton's quiet humor. The house was two stories high and there was a great hall, with an immense fireplace at one end. The sleeping rooms opened on a gallery above the hall. An effort had been made to give the house the appearance of Western wildness by introducing a great abundance of skins of wild beasts,—a highly dishonest bit of decorating, for they had been bought in Chicago. How else, indeed, would skins of German boars and Polar bears be found in a ranch house on the Platte River! Under one wing of the stairway, which divided to left and right at the center of the hall, was the dining-room; under the other was the ranch office.

"Those fellows thought a good deal of their stomachs," said Snyder, as Saxton opened and shut the empty drawers of the sideboard, which had been built into one end of the western wall of the room, in such a manner that a pane of glass, instead of a mirror, filled the center. The intention of this was obviously to utilize the sunset for decorative purposes, and Saxton chuckled as he comprehended the idea.

"I suppose our mortgage covers the sunset, too," he said. Nearly every portable thing of value had been removed, and evidently in haste; but the heavy oak chairs and the table remained. Snyder did his own modest cooking in the kitchen, which was in great disorder. The floor of the office was littered with scraps of paper. The original tenants had evidently made a quick settlement of their business affairs before leaving. Snyder slept here; his blanket lay in a heap on the long bench that was built into one side of the room, and a battered valise otherwise marked it as his lodging place. Saxton viewed the room with disgust; it was more like a kennel than a bedroom. His foot struck something on the floor; it was a silver letter-seal bearing the peculiar Poindexter brand, and he thrust it into his pocket with a laugh.

"My ranching wasn't so bad after all," he muttered.

"What's that?" asked Snyder, who was stolidly following him about.

"Nothing. If you have a pony we'll take a ride around the fences."

They spent the day in the saddle riding over the range. The ridiculous character of the Poindexter undertaking could not spoil the real value of the land. There was, Saxton could see, the making here of a great farming property; he felt his old interest in outdoor life quickening as he rode back to the house in the evening.

Snyder cooked supper for both of them, while Saxton repaired a decrepit windmill which had been designed to supply the house with water. He had formed a poor opinion of the caretaker, who seemed to know nothing of the property and who had, as far as he could see, no well defined duties. The man struck him as an odd person for the bank to have chosen to be the custodian of a ranch property. There was nothing for any one to do unless the range were again stocked and cattle raising undertaken as a serious business. Saxton was used to rough men and their ways. He had a happy faculty of adapting himself to the conversational capacities of illiterate men, and enjoyed drawing them out and getting their point of view; but Snyder's was not a visage that inspired confidence. He had a great shock of black hair and a scraggy beard. He lacked an eye, and he had a habit of drawing his head around in order to accommodate his remaining orb to any necessity. He did this with an insinuating kind of deliberation that became tiresome in a long interview.

"This place is too fancy to be of much use," the man vouchsafed, puffing at his pipe. "You may find some dude that wants to plant money where another dude has dug the first hole; but I reckon you'll have a hard time catching him. A real cattleman wouldn't care for all this house. It might be made into a stable, but a horse would look ridiculous in here. You might have a corn crib made out of it; or it would do for a hotel if you could get dudes to spend the summer here; but I reckon it's a little hot out here for summer boarders."

"The only real value is in the land," said Saxton. "I'm told there's no better on the river. The house is a handicap, or would be so regarded by the kind of men who make money out of cattle. Have you ever tried rounding up the cattle that strayed through the fences? The Poindexter crowd must have branded their last calves about two years ago. Assuming that only a part of them was sold or run off, there ought to be some two-year-olds still loose in this country and they'd be worth finding."

Snyder took his pipe from his mouth and snorted. "Yer jokin' I guess. These fellers around here are good fellers, and all that, but I guess they don't give anything back. I guess we ain't got any cattle coming to us."

"You think you'd rather not try it?"

"Not much!" was the expressive reply. The fellow smoked slowly, bringing his eye into position to see how Saxton had taken his answer.

John was refilling his own pipe and did not look up.

"Who've you been reporting to, Snyder?"

"How's that?"

"Who have you been considering yourself responsible to?"

"Well, Jim Wheaton at the Clarkson National hired me, and I reckon I'd report to him if I reported to anybody. But if you're going to run this shebang and want to be reported to, I guess I can report to you." He brought his turret around again and Saxton this time met his eye.

"I want you to report to me," said John quietly. "In the first place I want the house and the other buildings cleaned out. After that the fences must be put in shape. And then we'll see if we can't find some of our cows. You can't tell; we may open up a real ranch here and go into business."

Snyder was sprawling at his ease in a Morris chair, and had placed his feet on a barrel. He did not seem interested in the activities hinted at.

"Well, if you're the boss I'll do it your way. I got along all right with Wheaton."

He did not say whether he intended to submit to authority or not, and Saxton dropped the discussion. John rose and found a candle with which he lighted himself to bed in one of the rooms above. The whole place was dirty and desolate. The house had never been filled save once, and that was on the occasion of a housewarming which Poindexter and his fellows had given when they first took possession. One of their friends had chartered a private car and had brought out a party of young men and women, who had enlivened the house for a few days; but since then no woman had entered the place. In the Poindexter days it had been carefully kept, but now it was in a sorry plight. There had been a whole year of neglect and vacancy, in which the house had been used as a meeting place for the wilder spirits of the neighborhood, who had not hesitated to carry off whatever pleased their fancy and could be put on the back of a horse. Saxton chose for himself the least disorderly of the rooms, in which the furniture was whole, and where there were even a few books lying about. He determined to leave for Clarkson the following morning, and formulated in his mind the result of his journey and plans for the future of the incongruous combination of properties that had been entrusted to him. He sat for an hour looking out over the moon-lit valley. He followed the long sweep of the plain, through which he could see for miles the bright ribbon of the river. A train of cars rumbled far away, on the iron trail between the two oceans, intensifying the loneliness of the strange house.

"I seem to find only the lonely places," he said aloud, setting his teeth hard into his pipe.

In the morning he ate the breakfast of coffee, hard-tack and bacon which Snyder prepared.

"I guess you want me to hustle things up a little," said Snyder, more amiably than on the day before. He turned his one eye and his grin on Saxton, who merely said that matters must take a new turn, and that if a ranch could be made out of the place there was no better time to begin than the present. He had not formulated plans for the future, and could not do so without the consent and approval of his principals; but he meant to put the property in as good condition as possible without waiting for instructions. Snyder rode with him to the railway station.

"Give my regards to Mr. Wheaton," he said, as Saxton swung himself into the train. "You'll find me here at the old stand when you come back."

"A queer customer and undoubtedly a bad lot," was Saxton's reflection.

When Saxton had written out the report of his trip he took it to Wheaton, to get his suggestions before forwarding it to Boston. He looked upon the cashier as his predecessor, and wished to avail himself of Wheaton's knowledge of the local conditions affecting the several properties that had now passed to his care. Wheaton undoubtedly wished to be of assistance, and in their discussion of the report, the cashier made many suggestions of value, of which Saxton was glad to avail himself.

"As to the Poindexter place," said Saxton finally, "I've been advertising it for sale in the hope of finding a buyer, but without results. The people at headquarters can't bother about the details of these things, but I'm blessed if I can see why we should maintain a caretaker. There's nothing there to take care of. That house is worse than useless. I'm going back in a few days to see if I can't coax home some of the cattle we're entitled to; they must be wandering over the country,—if they haven't been rustled, and then I suppose we may as well dispense with Snyder."

He had used the plural pronoun out of courtesy to Wheaton, wishing him to feel that his sanction was asked in any changes that were made.

"I don't see that there's anything else to do," Wheaton answered. "I've been to the ranch, and there's little personal property there worth caring for. That man Snyder came along one day and asked for a job and I sent him out there thinking he'd keep things in order until the Trust Company sent its own representative here."

There were times when Wheaton's black eyes contracted curiously, and this was one of the times.

"I don't like discharging a man that you've employed," Saxton replied.

"Oh, that's all right. You can't keep him if he performs no service. Don't trouble about him on my account. How soon are you going back there?"

"Next week some time."

"Traveling about the country isn't much fun," Wheaton said, sympathetically.

"Oh, I rather like it," replied Saxton, putting on his hat.

Saxton was not surprised when he returned to the ranch to find that Snyder had made no effort to obey his instructions. He made his visit unexpectedly, leaving the train at Great River, where he secured a horse and rode over to the ranch. He reached the house in the middle of the morning and found the front door bolted and barred on the inside. After much pounding he succeeded in bringing Snyder to the door, evidently both surprised and displeased at his interruption.

"Howdy, boss," was the salutation of the frowsy custodian; "I wasn't feeling just right to-day and was takin' a little nap."

The great hall showed signs of a carousal. The dirt had increased since Saxton's first appearance. Empty bottles that had been doing service as candlesticks stood in their greasy shrouds on the table. Saxton sat down on a keg, which had evidently been recently emptied, and lighted a pipe. He resolved to make quick work of Snyder.

"How many cattle have you rounded up since I was here?" he demanded.

"Well, to tell the truth," began Snyder, "there ain't been much time for doing that since you was here."

"No; I suppose you were busy mending fences and cleaning house. Now you have been drawing forty dollars a month for doing nothing. I'll treat you better than you deserve and give you ten dollars bonus to get out. I believe the pony in the corral belongs to you. We'll let it go at that. Here's your money."

"Well, I guess as Mr. Wheaton hired me, he'd better fire me," the fellow began, bringing his eye to bear upon Saxton.

"Yes, I spoke to Mr. Wheaton about you. He understands that you're to go."

"He does, does he?" Snyder replied with a sneer. "He must have forgot that I had an arrangement with him by the year."

"Well, it's all off," said Saxton, rising. He began throwing open the windows and doors to let in fresh air, for the place was foul with the stale fumes of whisky and tobacco.

"Well, I guess I'll have to see Mr. Wheaton," Snyder retorted, finding that Saxton was paying no further attention to him. He collected his few belongings, watching in astonishment the violence with which Saxton was gathering up and disposing of rubbish.

"Going to clean up a little?" he asked, with his leer.

"No, I'm just exercising for fun," replied Saxton. "If you're ready, you'd better take your pony and skip."

Snyder growled his resentment and moved toward the door with a bundle under his arm and a saddle and bridle thrown over his shoulder.

"I'll be up town to see Mr. Wheaton in a day or two," he declared, as he slouched through the door.

"He seems to be more interested in Wheaton than Wheaton is in him," observed Saxton to himself.

Saxton spent a week at Great River. He hired a man to repair fences and put the house in order. He visited several of the large ranch owners and asked them for aid in picking out the scattered remnants of the Poindexter herd. Nearly all of them volunteered to help, with the result that he collected about one hundred cattle and sold them at Great River for cash. He expected to see or hear of Snyder in the town but the fellow had disappeared.

The fact was that Snyder had ridden over to the next station beyond Great River for his spree, that place being to his liking because it was beyond the jurisdiction of the sheriff whose headquarters were maintained at Great River,—an official who took his office seriously, and who had warned Snyder that his latest offense—getting drunk and smashing a saloon sideboard—must not be repeated. After he had been satisfactorily drunk for a week and had gambled away such of his fortune as the saloonkeeper had not acquired in direct course of commerce, Snyder came to himself sufficiently to send a telegram. Then he sat down to wait, with something of the ease of spirit with which an honest man sends forth a sight draft for collection from a town where he is a stranger, and awaits returns in the full enjoyment of the comforts of his inn.

On the third day, receiving no message from the outside world, Snyder sold his pony and took the train for Clarkson.

CHAPTER V DEBATABLE QUESTIONS

Evelyn Porter had come home in June to take her place as mistress of her father's house. The fact that she alone of the girls belonging to families of position in the town had gone to college had set her a little apart from the others. During her four years at Smith she had evinced no unusual interest in acquiring knowledge; she was a fair student only and had been graduated without honors save those which her class had admiringly bestowed on her. She had entered into social and athletic diversions with zest and had been much more popular with her fellow students than with the faculty. She brought home no ambition save to make her father's home as comfortable as possible. She said to herself that she would keep up her French and German, and straightway put books within reach to this end. She had looked with wonder unmixed with admiration upon the strenuous woman as she had seen her, full of ambition to remake the world in less than six days; and she dreaded the type with the dread natural in a girl of twenty-two who has a sound appetite, a taste in clothes, with money to gratify it, and a liking for fresh air and sunshine.

She found it pleasant to slip back into the life of the town; and the girl friends or older women who met her on summer mornings in the shopping district of Clarkson, remarked to one another and reported to their sons and husbands, that Evelyn Porter was at home to stay, and that she was just as cordial and friendly as ever and had no airs. It pleased Evelyn to find that the clerks in the shops remembered her and called her by name; and there was something homelike and simple and characteristic in the way women that met in the shops visited with one another in these places. She caught their habit of going into Vortini's for soda water, where she found her acquaintances of all ages sitting at tables, with their little parcels huddled in their laps, discussing absentees and the weather. She found, in these encounters, that most of the people she knew were again agitated, as always at this season, because Clarkson was no cooler than in previous years; and that the women were expressing their old reluctance to leave their husbands, who could not get away for more than two weeks, if at all. Some were already preparing for Mackinac or Oconomowoc or Wequetonsing, and a few of the more adventurous for the remoter coasts of New Jersey and Massachusetts. The same people were discussing these same questions in the same old spirit, and, when necessary, confessing with delightful frankness their financial disabilities, in excusing their presence in town at a season when it was only an indulgence of providence that all the inhabitants did not perish from the heat.

As a child Evelyn had played in the tower of the house on the hill, and she now made a den of it. Some of her childish playthings were still hidden away in the window seat, and stirred freshly the remembrance of her mother,—her gentleness, her frailty, her interest in the world's work. She often wondered whether the four years at college had realized all that her dead mother had hoped for; but she was not morbid, and she did not brood. She found a pleasure in stealing up to the tower in the summer nights, and watching the shifting lights of the great railway yards far down the valley, but at such times she had no romantic visions. She knew that the fitful bell of the switch engine and the rumble of wheels symbolized the very practical life of this restless region in which she had been born. She cherished no delusion that she was a princess in a tower, waiting for a lover to come riding from east or west. She had always shared with her companions the young men who visited her at college. When they sometimes sent her small gifts, she had shared these also. Warrick Raridan had gone to see her several times, as an old friend, and he had on these occasions, with characteristic enterprise, made the most of the opportunity to widen his acquaintance among Evelyn's friends, to whom she frankly introduced him.

On the day following John Saxton's introduction to the house, Evelyn was busy pouring oil on rusty places in the domestic machinery, when three cards were brought up to her bearing unfamiliar names. They belonged, she imagined, to some of the newer people of the town who had come to Clarkson during her years from home.

"Mrs. Atherton?" she said inquiringly, pausing before the trio in the drawing-room.

Two of the ladies looked toward the third, with whom Evelyn shook hands.

"Miss Morris and Mrs. Wingate," murmured the lady identified as Mrs. Atherton. They all sat down.

"It's so very nice to know that you are at home again," said Mrs. Atherton, "although I've not had the pleasure of meeting you before. I knew your mother very well, many years ago, but I have been away for a long time and have only recently come back to Clarkson.

"It is very pleasant to be at home again," Evelyn responded.

Mrs. Atherton smiled nervously and looked pointedly at her companions, evidently expecting them to participate in the conversation. The younger woman, who had been presented as Miss Morris, sat rigid in a gilt reception chair. She was of severe aspect and glared at Mrs. Atherton, who threw herself again into the breach.

"I hope you do not dislike the West?" Mrs. Atherton inquired of Evelyn.

"No, indeed! On the other hand I am very proud of it. You know I am a native here, and very loyal."

Miss Morris seized this as if it had been her cue, and declared in severe tones:

"We of the West are fortunate in living away from the artificiality of the East. There is some freedom here; the star of empire hovers here; the strength of the nation lies in the rugged but honest people of the great West, who gave Lincoln to the nation and the nation to Liberty." There was a glitter of excitement in the woman's eyes, but she spoke in low monotonous tones. Evelyn thought for a moment that this was conscious hyperbole, but Miss Morris's aspect of unrelenting severity undeceived her. Something seemed to be expected of her, and Evelyn said:

"That is all very true, but, you know, they say down East that we are far too thoroughly persuaded of our greatness and brag too much."

"But," continued Miss Morris, "they are coming to us more and more for statesmen. Look at literature! See what our western writers are doing! The most vital books we are now producing are written west of the Alleghanies!"

"You know Miss Morris is a writer," interrupted Mrs. Atherton. "We should say Doctor Morris," she continued, with a rising inflection on the title,—"not an M.D. Miss Morris is a doctor of philosophy."

"Oh," said Evelyn. "What college, Doctor Morris?"

"The University of North Dakota," with emphasis on the university. "I had intended going to Heidelberg, but felt that we loyal Americans should patronize home institutions. The choruses of Euripides may ring as grandly on our Western plains as in Athens itself," she added with finality. She enunciated with great care and seemed terribly in earnest to Evelyn, who felt an uncontrollable desire to laugh. But there was, she now imagined, something back of all this, and she waited patiently for its unfolding. The dénouement was, she hoped, near at hand, for Miss Morris moved her eyeglasses higher up on her nose and appeared even more formidable than before.

"I have heard that great emphasis is laid at Smith on social and political economy. You must be very anxious to make practical use of your knowledge," continued Miss Morris.

Evelyn recalled guiltily her cuts in these studies.

"Carlyle or somebody"—she was afraid to quote before a doctor of philosophy, and thought it wise to give a vague citation—"calls political economy the dismal science, and I'm afraid I have looked at it a little bit that way myself." She smiled hopefully, but Miss Morris did not relax her severity.

"Civic responsibility rests on women as strongly as on men; even more so," declared Miss Morris.

"Well, I think we ought to do what we can," assented Evelyn.

"Now, our Local Council has been doing a great deal toward improving the sanitation of Clarkson."

"Oh yes," exclaimed Mrs. Wingate from her corner.

"And we feel that every educated woman in the community should lend her aid to all the causes of the Local Council."

"Yes?" said Evelyn, rather weakly. She felt that the plot was thickening. "I really know very little of such things, but—" The "but" was highly equivocal.

"And we are very anxious to get a representative on the School Board," continued Miss Morris. "The election is in November. Has it ever occurred to you how perfectly absurd it is for men to conduct our educational affairs when the schools are properly a branch of the home and should be administered, in part, at least, by women?" She punctuated her talk so that her commas cut into the air. Mrs. Wingate, the third and silent lady, approved this more or less inarticulately.

"I know there's a great deal in that," said Evelyn.

"And we, the Executive Committee of the Council, have been directed to ask you"—Mrs. Wingate and Mrs. Atherton moved nervously in their seats, but Miss Morris now spoke with more deliberation, and with pedagogic care of her pronunciation—"to become a candidate for the School Board."

Evelyn felt a cold chill creeping over her, and swallowed hard in an effort to summon some word to meet this shock.