Winning the Wilderness Part 35

"Thaine's a farmer all right, Jo."

"He isn't going to be one always," Jo broke in quickly. "He's going to the Kansas University and there's no telling after that."

"No, he's just going to Wykerton, that's all. Nay, he have went. Him and him fraulein. And say, there's another pretty fraulein went up the trail just ahead of the Aydelot horse party. A sweetheart of a girl whom Thaine Aydelot took home after all last night."

"I don't care where Thaine goes," Jo cried.

"And you don't care for a farmer anyhow," Todd said suavely.

"Oh, that depends on how helpful he is," Jo responded tactfully.

Todd sprang up and began to fling the chairs about with extravagant energy in his pretense of being useful.

"Let's help Mrs. Aydelot as swift as possible. It's hot as the d.i.c.kens this morning, and the prognostics are for a cyclone before twelve hours.

It's nearly eleven of 'em now. I'll take you home when we are through.

Thaine isn't the whole of Gra.s.s River and the adjacent creeks and tributaries and all that in them is."

CHAPTER XV

THE COBURN BOOK

And I see, from my higher level, It is not the path but the pace That wearies the back, and dims the eye, And writes the lines on the face.

--Margaret E. Sangster.

Meanwhile the May suns.h.i.+ne beat hot upon the green prairie, and the promised storm gathered itself together behind the horizon where the three headlands were lost in an ash-colored blur. Wykerton, shut in by the broken country about Big Wolf Creek, was more uncomfortable than the open prairie. And especially was it uncomfortable in the "blind tiger" of the Wyker eating-house.

Today the men of the old firm of Champers & Co. were again holding a meeting in this little room that could have told of much lawless plotting if walls could only tell.

"It's danged hot in here, Wyker. Open that window," Darley Champers complained. "What kept you fellows so long, anyhow?"

"Business kep' me, and Smith here, he stop to peek at a pretty girl for goot as ten minute," Hans Wyker said jocosely.

Champers stared at Thomas Smith, whose small eyes gleamed back at him.

"Oh, I just turned to look at Miss s.h.i.+rley in the dining room. Can't a man look at a pretty girl if he is past forty-five? She didn't see me, though."

"Naw, she see nopotty but young Aydelot sitting mit her. Why you take oop precious time peekin' trough der crack in der kitchen door? I be back in a minute vonce. Smitt haf business mit you," Wyker declared as he turned to the kitchen again.

Left together, the two men sat silent a moment. Then Champers said with a frown:

"What do you want now? We've got no business with each other except as I am agent for your rents and mortgages."

"You seem to fatten on them, or something," Smith answered insinuatingly.

"You lose no flesh with the years, I see."

"I've little occasion to worry," Darley Champers replied meaningly.

"Not with a fat income like yours and small returns to your employer who's kept you all these years," Smith began, but Darley Champers mentally blew up. It was in the bluffer's game that he always succeeded best.

"Now, see here, dang you. Get to business. You and Wyker and me dissolved partners.h.i.+p long ago. I've been your agent years and years. I've did my best. I never got so rich you could notice it on my breath. I'm not a thief nor a murderer. I keep inside the law. I broke with you fellows years ago, except straight contract that'll probate in any court. You are a bully in power and a coward out of it. What the devil do you want with me? I'm no bank. Be clear and quick about it and quit your infernal dodgin' human beins like a cut-throat. I've signed your name to no end of papers for you when you wouldn't put your own left-handed writin' in sight. I have your written permit safe for doin' it. I reckon somebody must a' put that right hand of yours out of commission sometime. I'll find out about it one of these days myself."

Thomas Smith sat looking at the speaker with steady gaze. Many lines crossed his countenance now, but the crooked scar had not faded with time.

In a coffin his would be the face of an old man. Alive, it was so colorless and uninteresting in expression that not one person in a hundred would turn to take a second look at him nor dream of the orgies of dissipation his years could recount. Withal, he had the shabby, run-down appearance as of a man in hard lines financially.

"I want money and I want it quick, or I'd not come clear out here. And you are going to get it for me. That Cloverdale quarter I've held grown to weeds so long you will sell to the first buyer now. Jim s.h.i.+rley's at the last of his string. I did what I wanted to do with him. He'll never own a quarter again," Smith spoke composedly.

"Yes, I guess you're right. You've done him to his ruin. Jacobs has a mortgage on his home, too, and a Jew's a Jew. He'll close on Jim with a snap yet. It won't be the first time he's done it," Darley Champers declared.

"And that niece, Tank's girl, he was to protect for Alice Leigh?" Smith asked.

"Oh, eventually she'll either marry some hired man, I reckon, or go to sewin' or something like it for a livin'. She's a danged pretty girl now, but girls fade quick," Champers said.

For just one instant something like remorse swept Smith's face. Then he hardened again as the ruling pa.s.sion a.s.serted itself.

"Serves her right," he said in a tone so brutal that Champers remembered it.

"But I tell you I must have money. Two hundred dollars tonight and fourteen hundred inside of two weeks. And you'll get it for me. You understand that. And listen, now." Smith's voice slowly uncoiled itself to Champers' senses as a snake moves leisurely toward a bird it means to draw to itself. "You say you have signed my name for me and transacted business, handling my money. If you care to air the thing in court, I'm ready for you anytime. But do you dare? Well, bring me two hundred dollars before tomorrow and the other fourteen hundred inside of two weeks. And after this look out for yourself."

The threat in the last words was indescribable, and Champers would have shuddered could he have seen Smith's countenance as he left the room.

"So he taunts me with being a coward and a brute, a thief and a cut-throat; dares to strike me in the face when I've given him a living so long he's forgotten who did it. I'm done with him. But he don't dare to say a word."

He shut his lips tightly and slowly clinched his hands.

"For wy you stare so at dat door yet? Where's Champers?" Hans Wyker demanded as he came in.

"The game's between us two now," Thomas Smith declared, turning to Hans Wyker.

And a grim game was plotted then and there. Hans, who had been a perpetual law-breaker since the loss of his brewery business, had let his hatred of John Jacobs grow to a virulent poison in his system. While Thomas Smith, whose character Darley Champers had read truly, followed so many wrong paths down the years that conscience and manhood were strangers to him.

From being a financier he had dropped to the employment of a brewers'

a.s.sociation. His commission was to tempt young men and boys to drink; to create appet.i.tes that should build up the brewing business for the future.

In the game now, Smith was to deliver beer and whisky into Wyker's hands.

Wyker would do the rest. Whoever opposed him must suffer for his rashness.

It was cooler in the large dining-room where Thaine Aydelot and Leigh s.h.i.+rley had met by chance at noontime. Leigh's face wore a deeper bloom and her eyes were s.h.i.+ning with the exciting events of the day: the going of Pryor Gaines and the business that had brought her to Wykerton.

Something like pain stabbed suddenly into Thaine Aydelot's mind as he caught sight of her, a surprise to find how daintily attractive she was in her cool summer gown of pale blue gingham and her becoming hat with its broad brim above her brown-gold hair.

"I didn't expect to find you here," Leigh said as Thaine took the chair opposite her at the little table.

"I came over to Little Wolf with Rosie Gimpke and some other colts. Then I walked over here to catch a ride to Careyville, if I could," Thaine said carelessly.

"You can ride with me if you want to. I'll be going soon after dinner,"

Leigh suggested.

"Oh, I'll want to all right. It may be well to start early. It's so hot I expect there'll be a storm before night," Thaine suggested, wondering the while what Leigh's business in Wykerton might be.