Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 54, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 October 1917 — The Real Man [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Real Man

By Francis Lynde

SYNOPSIS. CHAPTER I—J. Montague Smith, Lawrenceville 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 Richlander, daughter of the local millionaire, 1 ! and meets Dunham alone at night in the bank. CHAPTER ll—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 IV—Williams/ chief engineer, finds the hobo Smith/used to money in big chunks and to making it work. The company is fighting concealed opposition and is near ruin./ Smith is jokingly .suggested as a financial doctor. CHAPTER VI. A Notice to Quit. Once started and given its push, the gray roadster drifted backward from the railroad crossing and kept on until It came to rest in the sag at the turn In the road. Running to overtake it, Smith found that the young woman •was still tryiwg ineffectually to free herself. In releasing the clutch her dress had been caught, and Smith was glad enough to let the extricating of the caught skirt and the cranking of the engine serve for a breatli-catching recovery.

When he stepped back to “tune” the spark the young woman had subsided into the mechanician’s seat and was retying her veil with fingers that were not any too steady. She was small blit well-knit; her hair was a golden brown and there was a good deal of it; her eyes were set well apart, and in the bright morning sunlight they were a slaty gray—of the exact shade of the motor veil she was rearranging. Smith had a sudden conviction that he had seen the wide-set eyes before; also the straight little nose and the halfboyish mohth and chin, though where he had seen them the conviction could give no present hint. “I sup-pup-suppose I ought to say something appropriate,” she was beginning, half breathlessly, while Smith stood at the fender and grinned. “You don’t have to say anything. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a chance to make such a bully grandstand play as this.” And then: “You’re Colonel Baldwin’s daughter, aren’t you?” She nodded, saying: “How did you know?” “I know the car. And you have your father’s eyes.” She did not seem to take it amiss that he was making her eyes a basis for comparisons. She was her father’s only son, as well as his only daughter, and she divided her time pretty evenly in trying to live up to both sets of requirements. “You have introduced me; wo-won’t you introduce yourself?” she said, when a second crash of the shifting freight train spent itself and gave her an opening. , “I’m Smith,” he told her; adding: “It’s my real name.” Her laugh was an instant easing of tensions.

“Oh, yes; you’re Mr. Williams’ assistant. I’ve heard colonel-da—my father, speak of you.” “No,” he denied in blunt honesty, “I’m not Williams’ assistant; at least, the pay roll doesn’t say so. Up at the camp they call me ‘the Hobo.’ ” The young woman had apparently regained whatever small fraction of self-possession the narrow escape had shocked aside. ■ “Are they never going to take that miserable train out of the way?” she exclaimed. “I’ve got to see Mr. Williams, and there isn’t a minute to spare. Colonel-da —I mean my father, has gone up to Red Butte, and a little while ago they telephoned over to' the ranch from the Brewster office to say that there was going to be some more trouble at the dam.” “You won’t find Williams at the camp. He started out early this morning beyond Little creek, and said he wouldn’t be back until some time tomorrow. Will you tell me what you’re needing?” “Oh!” she exclaimed, with a little gasp of disappointment, “I’ve simply got to find Mr. Williams —or somebody! Do you happen to know anything about the lawsuit troubles?” “I know all about them; Williams has told me.” “Then I’ll tell you what Mr. Martin telephoned. He said that three men were going to pretend to relocate a mining claim in the hills back of the dam, somewhere near the upper end of the reservoir lake-that-is-to-be. They’re doing it so that they can getout an injunction, or whatever you call it, and then we’ll have to buy them off, as the others have been bought off.” Smith was by this time entirely familiar with the mans and profiles and other records of the ditch company’s lands and holdings. “All the land within the limits of the fiood level has been bought and paid

so of it more than once, hasn’t k?” he asked. “Oh, yes; but that doesn’t make any difference. These men will claim that their location was made long ago, and that they are just now getting ready to work it. It’s often done in the case of mining claims.” “When is all this going to happen?” he inquired. < “It is already happening,” she broke out . impatiently. “Mr. Martin said the three men left town a little after daybreak and crossed on the Brewster bridge to go up on the other ’side of the Timanyoni.” The young woman had taken her place again behind the big tiller wheel and Smith calmly motioned her out of it. “Take the other seat and let me get in here,” he said; and when she had changed over, he swung in behind the wheel and put a foot on the clutch pedal. “What are you going to do?” she asked. “I’m going to take you on up to the camp, and then, if you’ll lend me this car, I’ll go and do what you hoped to persuade Williams to do —run these mining-claim jokers into the tall timber.” “But you can’t!” she protested; “you can’t do it alone I And, besides, they are on the other side of the river, and you can’t get anywhere with the car. You’ll have to go all the way back to Brewster to get across the river!” It was just here that he stole another glance at the very-much-alive little face behind the motor veil; at the firm, round chin and the resolute slaty-gray eyes. “I suppose I ought to take you to the camp,” he said. “But you may go along with me, if you want to —and are not afraid.” She laughed in his face.

“I was born here in Timanyoni, and you haven’t been here three weeks: do you think I’d be afraid to go anywhere that you’ll go?” “We’ll see about that,” he chuckled, matching the laugh; and with that he ' let the clutch take hold, sent the car j rolling gently up to the level of the i railroad embankment and across the I rails of the main track, and pulled it around until it was headed fairly for the upper switch. Then he put the motor in the reverse and began to back the car on the siding, steering so that the wheels on one side hugged the inside of one rail. “What in the world are you trying to do?” questioned the young woman who had said she was not afraid. “Wait,” he temporized; “just wait a minute and get ready to hang on like grim death. We’re going across on that trestle.” He fully expected her to shriek and grab for the steering wheel. That, he told himself, was what the normal young woman would do. But Miss Corona disappointed him. “You’ll put us both into the river, and smash Colonel-daddy’s caf, but I guess the Baldwin family can stand it if you can,” she remarked quite calmly. Smith kept on backing until the car had passed the switch from which the spur branched off to cross to the material yard on the opposite side of the river. A skillful bit of juggling put the roadster over on the ties of the spur-track. Then he turned to his fellow risk.

“Sit low and hang on with both hands,” he directed. “Now!” and he opened the throttle. The trestle was not much above two hundred feet long, and, happily, the cross-ties were closely spaced. Steered to a hair, the big car went bumping across, and in his innermost recesses Smith was saying to his immediate ancestor, the well-behaved bank clerk: ■‘You swab! You never saw the day when you could do a thing like this . . . you thought you had me tied up in a bunch of ribbon, didn’t you?” If Miss Baldwin were frightened, she did not show it. Smith jerked the roadster out of the entanglement of the railroad track and said: “You may sit up now and tell me which way to go. I don’t know anything about the roads over here.” She pointed out the way across the hills, and a fouy-mile dash followed. Up hill and down the big roadster raced, devouring the interspaces, and at the topping of the last of the ridges, in a small, low-lying swale which was well hidden from any point of view in the vicinity of the distant dam, they came ’ upon the interlopers. There were three men and two horses and a covered wagon, as Martin’s telephone message had catalogued them. The horses were still in the traces, and just beyond the wagon a legal mining claim had been marked out by freshly driven stakes. At one end two of the men were digging perfunctorily, while the third was tacking the legal notice on a bit of board nailed to one of the stakes. Smith sent the gray car rocketing down into the swale, brought it to a

stand with a thrust of the brakes, and jumped out. Once more the primitive Stone Age man in him, which had slept so long and so* quietly under the Lawrenceville conventionalities, was joyously pitching the barriers aside. “It’s moving day for you fellows,” he announced cheerfully, picking the biggest of the three-as the proper subject for the order giving. “You’re on the Timanyoni Ditch company’s land, and you know it. Pile into the wagon and fade away!” The big man’s answer was a laugh, pointed, doubtless, by the fact that the order givey was palpably.unarmed. Smith’s right arm shot out. and when the blow landed there were only two left to close in on him. In such sudden hostilities the advantages are all with the beginner. Having superior reach and a good bit more skill than either of the two tacklers, Smith held his own until he could get in a few more of the smashing right-handers, but in planting them he took punishment enough to make him Berserkmad and so practically invincible. There was a fierce mingling of arms, legs and bodies, sufficiently terrifying, one would suppose, to a young woman sitting calmly in an automobile a hundred yards away. The struggle was short in just proportion to its vigor, and at the end of it two of the trespassers were knocked out, and Smith was dragging the third over to the wagon, into which he presently heaved the man as if he had been a sack of meal. Miss Baldwin, sitting in the car, saw her ally dive into the covered wagon and come out with a pair of rifles. Pausing only long enough to smash the guns, one after the other, over the wagon wheel,

he started back after the two othei men. They were not waiting to be carried to the wagon; they were up and running in a wide semicircle tc reach their hope of retreat unslain, il that might be. It was all very brutal and barbarous, no doubt, but the colonel’s daughter was Western born and bred, and she clapped her hands and laughed in sheer enthusiasm when she saw Smith, make a show of chasing the circling runners. He did not return to her until after he had pulled up the freshly driven stakes and thrown them away, and by that time the wagon, with the horses lashed to a keen gallop, was disappearing over the crest of the northern ridge. “That’s one way to get rid of them, isn’t it?” said the emancipated bank man, jocosely, upon taking his place in the car to cramp it for the turn. “Was that something like the notion you had in mind?” “Mercy, no!” she rejoined. And then: “Are you sure you are not hurt?’’ “Not worth mentioning,” he evaded. “Those duffers couldn’t hurt anybody, so long as they couldn’t get to their guns.” “But you have saved the company at your own expense. They will be sure to have you arrested.” “We won’t cross that bridge until we come to it,” he returned. “If we were back in the country from which I have lately escaped, it would be proper for me to ask your permission to drive you safely home. Since we are not, I shall assume the permission and do it anyway.” “Oh, is that necessary?” she asked, meaning, as he took it, nothing more than comradely deprecation at putting him to the trouble of it.

“Not absolutely necessary, perhaps, but decently prudent. You might drop me opposite the dam, but you’d have to pass those fellows somewhere on the way, and they might try to make it unpleasant for you.” She made no further comment, and he sent the car spinning along over the bills to the westward. A mile short of the trestle river crossing they overtook and passed the wagon. Because he had the colonel’s daughter with him, Smith put on a burst of speed and so gave the claim jumpers no chance to provoke another battle. In the maze of crossroads opposite the little city on the south bank of the river, Smith was out of his reckoning, and was obliged to ask his companion to direct him. “I thought you weren’t ever going to say anything any more,’\she sighed, in mock despair. “Take this road to the right.” “I can’t talk and drive a speed wagon at the same time,” he told her. twisting the gray car into the road she had indicated, and he made the assertion good by covering the four remaining miles in the some preoccupied fashion. • There was a reason, of a sort, for his silence; two of them, to be exact. For one, he was troubled by that haunting sense of familiarity which was still trying to tell him that this

was not his first meeting with Colonel Baldwin’s daughter; and the other, much bigger and more depressing, was the realization that in breaking with his past, he had broken also with the world of women, at least to the extent of ever asking one of them to marry him. • - He pushed the thought aside, coming back to the other one —-the puzzle of familiarity when Miss Baldwin pointed to a transplanted Missouri farm mansion, with a columned portico, standing in a grove of cottonwoods on the left-hand side of the road, telling him it was Hillcrest. There was a massive stone portal fronting the road, and when he got down to open the gates the young woman took the wheel and drove through; whereupon he decided that it was time for him to break away, and said so. “But how will you get back to the camp?” she asked. “I have my two legs yet, and the walking Isn’t bad.” “No; but you might meet those two men again.” v “That is the least of my troubles.” Miss Corona Baldwin, like the Missouri colonel, her father, came upon moments now and then when she had the ultimate courage of her impulses. “I should have said you hadn’t a trouble in the world,” she asserted, meeting his gaze level-eyed. The polite paraphrases of the coffined period were slipping to the end of his tongue, but he set his teeth upon them and said, Instead: “That’s all you know about It. What If T should tell you that you’ve been driving this morning with aiwf scaped convict?” “I shouldn’t believe it,” she said calmly.

“Well, you haven’t —not quite,” he returned, adding the qualifying phrase in sheer honesty. She had untied her veil and whs asking him hospitably if he wouldn’t come in. and meet her mother. Somehing in the way she said it, some little rwist of the lips or look of the eyes, touched the spring of complete recognition, and the familiarity puzzle vanshed instantly. “You forget that I am a workingnan,” he smiled. “My gang in the luarry will think I’ve found a bottle jomewhere.” And then: “Did you ever ose a glove, Miss Baldwin —a white rid with a little hole in one finger?” “Dozens of them,” she admitted; ‘and most of them had holes, I’m ifrald. But what has that to do with your coming in and meeting mamma ind letting her thank you for saving my life?” “Nothing at all, of course,” he hastened to say; and with that he >ade her good-by rather abruptly, and turned his back upon the transplanted Missouri mansion, muttering to himself as he closed the portal gates be-

hind him : “ ‘Baldwin,’ of course I What an ass I was not to remember the name! And now I’ve got the other half of it, too; it’s ‘Corona.’” Cl'O BE CONTINUED.) ,

The Struggle Was Short.