Jasper County Democrat, Volume 9, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 November 1906 — The Manager Of the B. & A. [ARTICLE]

The Manager Of the B. & A.

By VAUGHAN KESTER

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. I—Dan Oakley. Manager of the Buckhorn and Antioch railroad (known as the • Huckleberry"). receives two letters, one telling him that his convict father, Roger Oakley, has been pardoned, and the other that (ie'neral Cornish, the owner of the H. Ac A., is about to visit Antioch. ll—Oakley visit' Or. Emory and meets Constance Emory. Other visitors are Grill Ryder, owner of the Antioch Herald, and Turner Joice, the local artist. 111—Oakley tells General Cornish that in order to keep the car shops running a cut in wages is necessary. IV -Oakley tells Holt, his assistant treasurer, of the proposed cuts. V—Roger Oakley nppears In Antioch. He is a worthy old man. who killed an enemy in self defence and.was unjustly convicted of murder. VI Kogfcr Oakley goes to work in the car shops, tir'd Ryder tries to induce Dan to keep a friend at work. Oakley refuses. Vll—Oakley and Ryder are rivals for Constance Emory's favor. Vlll—Through Kenyon, candidate for congress, whose cousin is warden of the prison in which Roger Oakley was confined, Ryder learns the old man’s history. IX —Oakley cuts wages in the car shops He is attacked by the Herald. X—Oakley's ollice boy learns from the son of one of the men that the men are planning a strike and that Ryder is spreading the tale that Roger Oakley is a criminal XI —The men in the car shops refuse to work with Roger Oaklev. Branyon. their leader, is discharged. Oakley tells Dr. Emory that he will stay in Antioch and face the situation. X 111—Oakley has a final interview with Constance. XIV and XV—The car shop men go on strike. CHAPTER XVII. RYDER’S murder furnished Antioch with a sensation the like of which it had not known in many a day. It was one long, breathless shudder, ramified with contingent horrors. Dippy Ellsworth remembered that when lie drove up in his cart on the nigtit of the tragedy to light the street lamp which stood on the corner by the Herald office his horse had balked and refused to go near the curb. It was generally conceded that the sagacious brute smelled blood. Dippy himself said he would not sell that horse for $1 ,000, and It was admitted on all sides that such an animal possessed a value hard to reckon in mere dollars and cents. Three men recalled that they had passed the Ilemid office and noticed that the door stood open. Within twen-ty-four hours they were hearing groans and within a week cries for help, but they were not encouraged. Of course the real hero was Bob Bennett, Ryder’s assistant, who had discovered the body when he went back to the office at half past 8 to close the forms. Ills account of the finding of Ryder dead on the floor was an exceedingly grizzly narrative, delightfully conducive of the shivers. He had been the quietest of youths, but two weeks after the murder he left for Chicago. He said there might be those who could stand It, but Antioch was too slow for him. Not less remarkable was Ryder's posthumous fame. Men who had never known him in life now spoke of him with trembling voices and every outward evidence of the sincerest sor row. It was as If they had sustained a personal loss, for Ids championship of the strike had given him a great popularity, and his murder, growing out of this championship, as all preferred to believe, made his death seem a species of martyrdom. Indeed, the mere fact that he hud been murdered would have been suit! cleat to make him popular at any time. He had supplied Antioch with a glorious sensation. It was something tc talk over and discuss and shudder at and the town was grateful and happy With the deep, calm joy of V perfect •motion. It determined to give him a funeral which should lie eredltable alike to the cause for which hi* had died and to the manner of his death. Meanwhile Dan laid been arrested, examined and sot at liberty again in the face of the prevailing sentiment that he should he held. No one doubted—lie himself least of all—that Roger Oakley had killed Ryder. Bob Bennett recalled their meeting as lie left the office to go home for supper on the night of the murder, and a red and yellow hunduuna handkerchief was found under the table, which Dan Identified as having belonged to his father, Kenyon came to Antioch und made his re-election almost certain by the offer of a reward of SSOO for the arrest and conviction of the murderer. This stimulated a wonderful measure of activity. Parties of men and hoys were soon scouring the woods and fields In quest of the old convict. The day preceding that of the funeral a dusty countryman on a hard ridden plow horse dashed into town with the news that a man who answered perfectly to the description of Roger Oakley had been seen the night before twenty-six miles north of Antioch, at a place called Harrow’s Sawmills, where he had stopped at a store and made a number of Then he had struck off through the woods. It was also learned that he had eaten his breakfast the morning after the murder at a farmhouse midway between Antioch and Harrow’s Sawmills. The farmer’s wife had at his request put up a lunch for him. Later In the day a man at work In a field had seen and spoken with him. There was neither railroad, telegraph nor telephone at Barrow’s Sawmills, and the fugitive had evidently considered It safe to venture Into the place, trusting that he was ahead of the news of his crime. It was on the edge of a sparsely settled district, and to the north of. U was the unbroken

wilderness ""stretching away ~to The lakes and the Wisconsin line. The morning of the funeral an extra edition of the Herald was Issued, which contained a glowing account of Ryder’s life and achievements. It was an open secret that It was from the gifted pen of Kenyon. This notable enterprise xvas one of the wonders of the day. Everybody wanted a Herald as a souvenir of the occasion, and nearly 500 copies were sold. All that morning the country people in unheard of numbers flocked into town. As Clarence remarked to Spide, It was just like a circus day. The noon* train from Buckhorn Junction arrived crowded to the doors, as did the 1 o’clock train from Harrison. Antioch had never known anything like it. n -.. The funeral was at 2 o’clock from the little white frame Methodist church, but long before the appointed hour It xvas crowded to the verge of suffocation, and the anxious, waiting throng overflowed into the yard and street with never a hope of wedging Into the building, much less securing seats. A delegation of the strikers, the Y'oung Men's Kenyon club, of which Ryder was a member, and ,a representative body of citizens escorted the remains to the church. These were the people he had jeered at, whose simple joys he had ridiculed and whose griefs lie had made light of, but they would gladly have forgiven him Ills sarcasms even had they known of them. He had become a hero and a martyr. Chris Berry and Cap Roberts were In charge of the arrangements. On the night ol’ the murder the termer had beaten his rival to the Herald office by exactly three minutes and had never left Ryder until lie lay in the most costly casket in his shop. It was admitted afterward by thoughtful men who were accustomed to weigh their opinions carefully that Mr. Williamson, the minister, had never delivered so moving an address or one that contained so obvious a moral. The drift of his remarks was that the death of their brilliant and distinguished fellow townsman should serve ns a warning to nil that there was no time like the present in which to prepare for the life everlasting. He assured his audience that each hour of existence should tie devoted to consecration and silent testimony; otherwise, what did it avail? It was not enough that Ryder had thrown the weight of his personal Influence and exceptional talents on the side of sound morality and civic usefulness. And ns he soared on from point to point his hearers soared with him. and when he rounded in on each well tried climax they rounded in with him. He never failed them once. They always knew what he was going to say before it was said and were ready for the thrill when the thrill was due. It might have seemed that Mr. Williamson was paid a salary merely to make an uncertain hereafter yet more uncomfortable and uncertain, but Antioch took its religion hot, with a shiver and a threat of blue flame. When Mr. Williamson sat down Mr. Kenyon rose. As a layman he could bo entirely eulogistic. lie was sure of the faith which through life had been the guiding star of the departed. lie lmd seen it instanced by numerous acts of eminently t'hristian benevolence, and on those rare occasions when lie had spoken of his hopes and fears ha had, in spite of his shrinking modesty, shown that Ids standards of Christian duty were both lofty and consistent. Mere the Hon. Jeb Barrows, who had been dozing peacefully, awoke with a start and gazed with wide, bulging eyes at the speaker. He followed Mr. Kenyon, and, though he tried hard, he couldn’t recall any expression of Ryder’s, at the Red Star bar or elsewhere, which Indicated that then* was any spiritual uplift to his nature which he fed at secret altars; so he pictured the friend and citizen, and the dead fared well at bts hands, perhaps better than he was conscious of, for he said no more than he believed. Then came the prayer and hymn, to be succeeded by a heavy, solemn pause, and Mr. Williamson stepped to the front, of the platform. “All those who care to view the remains—und 1 presume there are many here who will wish to look upon the face of our dead friend before It is conveyed to its final resting placewill please form In line at the rear of the edifice and advance quietly up the right aisle, passing across the church as quickly as possible and thence down the Jest aisle and on out through the door. This will prevent confusion and make It much pleasanter for all.” There was n rustle of skirts and the awkward shuffling of many feet as the congregation formed in line; then It filed slowly up the aisle to where Chris Berry stood, weazened and dry, with a vulture look on lfis face and a vulture touch to his hands that now and again picked at the flowers which were banked about the coffin. The Emorys, partly out of regard for public sentiment, had attended the funeral, for, ns the doctor said, they were the only real friends Griff had In the town. They had known and liked him when the rest of Antioch was dubiously critical of the newcomer, whose ways were not Its ways. When the congregation thronged up

the aisle Constance, who had endured the long service, which to her was unspeakably grotesque and hrfrrlble, In shocked if silent'rebellion slipped her hand Into her mother’s. "Take me away,” she whispered brokenly, “or I shall cry out! Take me away!” Mrs. Emory hesitated. It seemed a desertion of a trust to go and leave Griff these strangers, who had been brougdit there by morbid curiosity. Constance guessed what was passing In he£ mind. “Papa will remain If It Is necessary. ’ Mrs. Emory touched the doctor on the shoulder. “We’re going home, John: Constance doesn’t feel well; but you stay.” When they reached the street the last vestige of Constance’s self control vanished utterly. “Wasn’t it awffil!” she sobbed. “And his life had only just begun! And to be snuffed out like this, when there was everything to live for!’’ Mrs. Emory, surprised at the sudden show of feeling, looked into her daughter’s face. Constance understood the tool;. “No. no! lie was onl4S a friend! He could never have been more than that. Poor, poor Griff!’’! “I am glad your sake, dearie," said Mrs. Emory gently. “I wasn’t very kind to him at the last, but I couldn’t know—l couldn’t know,” she moaned. She was not much given to these confidences even with her mother. Usually she never questioned the wisdom or righteousness of her own acts, and It was not her habit to put them to the test of a less generous judgment, but she was remembering her last meeting with Ryder. It had been tlio day before his death. He had told her that he loved her, and she had flared up, furious and resentful, with the dull, accusing ache of many days In her heart and a cruel readiness to make him suffer. She had tried to convince herself afterward that it was only his vanity that xvas hurt. m Then she thought of Oakley. She had been thinking of him all day, wondering where he was, if he had left Antioch, and not daring to ask. They were going up the path now toward the house, and she turned to her mother again. “What do they say of Mr. Oakley—l mean Mr. Dan Oakley? I don’t know why, but I’m more Sorry for him than I am for Griff. He has so much to bear!” “I heard your father say he was still here. I suppose he has to remain. He can’t choose.” “What will be done xvith his father if he is captured? Will they”— She could not bring herself to finish the sentence. “Goodness knows! I wonldn’t worry about him,” said Mrs. Emory in a tone of considerable asperity. “He made all the trouble, and I haven’t a particle of patience with him!” [TO BE CONTINUED) The Democrat keeps on 'hand at all times a handsome stock of wedding invitations and announcements, and also has new and late styles of type for printing this class of work.