Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 September 1917 — The Real Man [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Real Man

By Francis Lynde

CHAPTKR I—J. Montague Smith. Law* renceviile bank cashier and society man, receives two letters- One warns him that a note which he has O. K.*d with consent of Watrous Dunham, the bank's president, is worthless. The other is a summons from Dunham. He breaks an appointment with Vera Riehlander. daughter of the local millionaire, and meets Dunham alone at night In the bank. CHAPTER n—Dunham threatens Smith •with the police. Smith becomes aggressive. Dunham draws a pistol and is floored by a blow that apparently kills him. Smith escapes on an outgoing freight train. CHAPTER I!!. The High Hills. The Nevada through f.v : ght was two hours late issuing from the western portal of Timanyoni Canon. Through the early mountain-climbing hours of the night and the later flight across the Red desert, the dusty, travel-grimed young fellow in the empty box car midway of the train had slept soundly, with the hard ear floor for a bed and his folded coat for a pillow. But the sudden cessation of the crash and roar of the shut-in mountain passage awoke him and he got up to open the door and look out. It was still no later than a lazy man’s breakfast time, and the May morning was perfect. Over tbe top of the eastern range the sun was looking, levelrayed. into a parked valley bounded on all sides by high spurs and distant snow peaks. In its nearer reaches the valley was dotted with round hills, some of them bare, others dark with mountain pine and fir. From the outer loopings of the curves, the young tramp at the car door had momentary glimpses of the Timanyoni, a mountain torrent in its canon, and the swiftest of upland rivers even here' where it had the valley in which to expand. A Copah switchman had tqjd him that the railroad division town of Brewster lay at the end of the night’s run, in a river valley beyond the eastern Timanyonis, and that the situation of the irrigation project which was advertising for laborers in the Denver newspapers was a few miles up the river from Brewster, o As the train swept along on its way down the grades the valley became more open and tha prospect broadened. At one of the promontory roundings the box-car passenger had a glimpse of a shack-built construction camp on the river’s margin some distance on ahead. A concrete dam was rising in sections out of the river, and dominating the dam and the shacks two steel towers, with a carrying cable stretched between them, formed tbe piers of the aerial spout conveyer for the placing of the material in the forms. The train made no stop at the construction siding, but a mile farther along the brakes began to grind and the speed was slackened. Sliding the car door another foot or two, the young tramp with the week-old stubble beard on his face leaned out to look ahead. His opportunity was at hand. A block semaphore was turned against the freight and the train was slowing in obedience to the signal. Waiting until the brakes shrilled again, the tramp put his shoulder to the sliding door, sat for a moment in the wider opening, and then strung off.

His alighting was upon one of the promontory embankments. To the •westward, where the curving railroad track was lost in the farther windings of the river, lay the little intermountain city of Brewster, a few of its higher buildings showing dear-cut in the distance. Paralleling the railroad, on a lower level and nearer the river, % dusty wagon roau potsted in one direction toward the town; and in the other toward the construction camp. The young man who'had crossed four states and the better part of a fifth as a fugitive and vagrant turned his back upon the distant town as a place to be avoided. Scrambling down the railroad embankment, he made his way to the wagon road, crossed it. and kept on until he came to the fringe of aspens on the river’s edge, where he broke all the trampish traditions by stripping off the travel-worn clothes and plunging in to take a soapless bath. The water, being melted snow from the range, was Icy cold and it stabbed like knives. Nevertheless, it was wet. and some part of the travel dust, at least, was soluble in it. He came out glowing, but a thorn from his well-groomed past came up and pricked him when he had to put the soiled clothes on again. There was no present help for that, however; and five minutes later he had regained the road and was on his way to the ditch camp. As he walked he read for the fiftieth time- something on the page of a recent St. Louis paper. It was under flaring headlines: ATTEMPTED MURDER OF BANK PRESIDENT. Society-Leader Cashier Embezzles SIOO,OOO and Makes Murderous Assault on President Lawreneeville, May la-—J- Montague smith, cashier of me Lawreneeville Bank and Trust company, and a leader in the Lawreneeville younger set is today a fugitive from Justice with a price on his

Read. A t a late hour last night trr watchman of the bank found President Dunham lying unconscious in front of his desk. Help was summoned, and Mr. Dunham, who was supposed to be suffering from some sudden attack of illness, was taken to his hoteL Later, it transpired that the president had been the victim of a murderous assault. Discovering upon hl£ return to the city yesterday evening that the cashier had been using the bank’s funds in an attempt to cover a stock speculation of his own, Dunham sent for Smith and charged him with the crime. Smith made an unprovoked and desperate assault upon his superior officer, beating him into insensibility and leaving him for board any of the night trains east or west, Smith is supposed to be in hiding somewhere in the vicinity of the city. A warrant is out, and a reward of SI,OOO for his arrest and detention has been offered by the bank. It is not thought possible that he can escape. It was currently reported not long since that Smith was engaged to a prominent young society woman of Lawrenceville, but this has proved to be untrue.

He folded the newspaper and put It in his pocket. The thing was done, and it could not be undone. Having put himself on the wrong side of the law, there was nothing for it now but a complete disappearance; exile, a change of identity, and an absolute severance with his past. When he had gone a little distance he found that the wagon road crossed the right of way twice before the construction camp came into view. The last of the crossings was at the temporary material yard for which the side track had been installed, and from this point on, the wagon road held to the-river bank. The ditch people were doubtless getting all their material over the railroad so there would be little hauling by wagon. But there were automobile tracks in the dust, and shortly after he had passed the material yard the tramp heard a car coming up hehiud him. It was a six-cylin-der roadster, and its motor was missing badly. Its single occupant was a big, bearded man, wearing his gray tweeds as one to whom clothes were merely a Convenience. He was chewing a black cigar, and the unoccupied side of his mouth was busy at the passing moment heaping objurgations upon the limping motor. A hundred yards farther along the motor gave a spasmodic gasp and stopped. When the young tramp came up, the big man had climbed out and had the hood open. What he was saying to the stalled motor was picturesque enough to make the young man stop and grin appreciatively. “Gone bad on you ?” he inquired. Col. Dexter Baldwin, the Timanyoni’s largest landowner, and a breeder of fine horses who tolerated motorcars only because they could be driven hard and were insensate and fit subjects for abusive language, took his head out of the hood. “The third time this morning,” he snapped. ‘Td rather drive a team of wind-broken mustangs, any day in the year!” “I used to drive a car a while back,” said the tramp. “Let me look her over.” The colonel stood aside, wiping his hands on a piece of waste, while the young man sought for the trouble. It was found presently in a loosened

magneto wire; found and cleverly corrected. The trump went around in front and spun the motor, and when it had been throttled down, Colonel Baldwin had his hand in his pocket. “That’s something like,” he said. "The garage man said it was carbon. Yon take hold as if you knew how. What’s your fee?” The tramp shook his head and smiled good-naturedly. “Nothing; for a bit of neighborly help like that” The colonel put his coat on, and in the act took a better ipeasure of the stalwart young fellow who looked like a hobo and talked and behaved like a gentleman. “You'are hiking out to the dam?” he asked brusquely. „ “I am headed that way, yes,” was the equally crisp rejoinder. “Hunting a job?” “Just that” “What soVt of a job?

“Anything that may happen to be In *ight.” “That means a pick nnJ shovel or a wheelbarrow oh a construction job. But there isn’t much office work.” The tramp looked up quickly. “What makes you think I’m hunting for an office job?” he queried. “Tour hands,” said the colonel shortly. The young man looked at his hands thoughtfully. They were dirty again from the tinkering with the motor, but the inspection went deeper than the grime. , “I’m not afraid of the pick and Shovel, or the wheelbarrow, and on some accounts I guess they’d 'be good for me. But on the other hand, perhaps it is a pity to spoil a middling good office man to make an indifferent day-laborer—to say nothing of knocking some honest fellow out of the only job he knows how to do.” Colonel Baldwin swung in behind the steering wheel of the roadster and held n fresh match to the black cigar. Though he was from Missouri, he had lived long enough in the high hills to know better than to judge any man altogether by outside appearances. “Climb in,” he said, indicating the vacant seat at his side. “I’m the president of the ditch company. Perhaps Williams may be able to use you; but your chances for office work would he ten to one lu the luwn.* i ~~ “I don’t care to live in the town,” said the man out of work, mounting to the proffered seat; and past that the big roadster leaped away up the road and the roar of the rejuvenated motor made further speech impossible. (TO BE CONTINUED.)

“I Used to Drive a Car.”