Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 57, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 October 1917 — The Real Man [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Real Man

By Francis Lynde

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, 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 lll—Near Brewster, Colo., Dexter Baldwin, president of the Timanyonl Ditch company, gets Smith an office job at the big dam the company is building. 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 V—Williams talks business to Smith, who will tell nothing of his past. Smith pushes a stalled auto away from an oncoming train and saves tlje eolonel’s daughter Corona. CHAPTER Vl—While Corona looks on he drives off three bogus mining right claimants from the company’s land. CHAPTER VII. Tlmanyoni Ditch. Smith had his vote of thanks from Jolonel Dexter Baldwin in Williams’ sheet-iron office at the dam, the colonel having driven out to the camp tor the express purpose; and the chief of construction himself was not present. “You’ve loaded us up with a tolerably heavy obligation, Smith —Corry’s mother and me,” was the way the colonel summed up. “If you hadn’t been on deck and strictly on the job at that railroad crossing yesterday morning—” “Don’t mention it, colonel,” Smith broke in.. “I did nothing more than any man would have done for any woman. You know it, and I know it. Let’s leave it that way and forget it.” The tall Missourian’s laugh was entlrely approbative. “I like that,” he said. “It’s a good, man-fashioned way of looking at it. You know how I feel about it —how any father would feel; and that’s enough.” “Plenty,” was the brief rejoinder. “But there’s another chapter to it that neither of us can cross out; you’ll have to come out to the ranch and let Corry’s mother have a hack at you,” Baldwin went on. “I couldn’t figure you out of that if I should try. And

now about those claim jumpers: I suppose you didn’t know any of them by name?” “No.” “Corry says you gave them the time of their lives. By George, I wish I’d been there to see!” and the colonel slapped his leg and laughed. “Did they look like the real thing—sureenough prospectors?” “They looked like a bunch of hired assassins,” said Smith, with a grin. “It’s some more of the interference, Isn’t it?” The colonel’s square jaw settled into the fighting angle. “How much do you know about this business mix-up of ours, Smith?” he asked. “All that Williams could tell me in a little heart-to-heart talk we had the other day.” “You agreed with him that there was a tolerably big nigger in the woodpile, didn’t you?” ' “I had already gathered that much from the camp gossip.” “Well, It’s so. We’re just about as helpless as a bunch of cattle in a sinkhole/’ was the ranchman president’s confirmation of the camp guesses. “What in the name of the great horn spoon can we do—more-than we have done?” “There are a number of things that might be done,” said Smith, falling back reflectively upon the presumably dead and buried bank-cashier part of

nim. “And if you can manage to stay in the game and play it out, there is big money in it for all of you; enough to make it well worth w’hile for you to put up the fight of your lives.” “Big money?—you mean in saving our investment?” “Oh, no; not at all; in cinching the other fellows,” Smith put in genially. Colonel Dexter Baldwin lifted his soft hat and ran his fingers through his grizzled hair. “Say, Smith; you mustn’t forget that I’m from Mis'souri,” he said half quizzically. “But I shouldn’t think you’d need to be ‘shown’ in this particular instance,” was the smiling rejoinder. “The chance to sell you people water from your own dam isn’t the only thing or the main thing in this case. They are obliged to have this dam site, or, at least, one as high up the river as this, in order to get the water over to their newly alienated grant in the western half of the park.” “You’ve got it straight,” said the colonel.

“Very good. Then they’re simply obliged to have your dam, or — Don’t you see the alternative now, colonel?” “Heavens to Betsy!” exclaimed the breeder of fine horses, bringing his fist down upon Williams’ desk with a crash that made the ink bottles dance. And then: “What a lot of fence-posts we are—the whole kit and b’ilin’ of us! If they get the dam, they sell water to us; if they don’t get it, we sell it to them!” “That’s it, exactly,” Smith put in quietly. “And I should say that your stake in the game is worth the stiffest fight you can make to save it. Don’t you agree with me?” “Great Jehu! I should say so!” ejaculated the amateur trust fighter. Then he broke down the barriers masterfully. “That settles it, Smith. You can’t wiggle out of it now, no way or shape. You’ve got to come over into Macedonia and help us. Williams tells me you refused him, but you can’t refuse me.” If Smith hesitated, it was only partly on his own account. He was thinking again of the young woman with the honest eyes when he said: “Do you know w r hy I turned Williams down when he spoke to me the other day?” Colonel Dexter Baldwin had his faults, like other men, but they were not those of indirection. “I reckon I do know, son,” he said, with large tolerance. “You’re a ‘lame duck’ of some sort. But that’s our lookout. Bartley is ready to swear that you are not a crooked crook, whatever else it is that you’re dodging for. Besides, there’s yesterday—” “We agreed to forget the yesterday incidents,” the lame duck reminded him quickly. And then: “I ought to say ‘No,’ Colonel Baldwin; say it straight out, and stick to it. If I don’t say it —if I ask for a little time —it is because I w’ant to weigh up a few things—the things I can’t talk about to you or to Williams. If, in the end, I should be fool enough to say ‘Yes,’ it is only fair to you to say that, right in the middle of the scrap, I may fall to pieces on you.” Baldwin was too shrewd to try to push his advantage when there was, or seemed to be, a chance that the desired end was as good as half attained. And it was a purely manful prompting that made him get up and thrust out his hand to the young fellow who was trying to be as frank as he dared to be.

“Put it there, John,” he said heartily. “Nobody in the Timanyoni is going to pry into you an inch farther than you care to let ’em; and if you get into trouble by helping us, you can count on at least one backer who will stand by you until the cows come home. Now, then, hunt up your coat, and weill drive over to Hillcrest for a bite to eat. I had my orders from the missus before I left town, and I know better than to go home without you. Never mind the commissary khaki. It won’t be the first time that the working clothes have figured at the Hillcrest table —not by a long shot.” And because he did not know how to frame a refusal that would refuse, Smith got his coat and went. Given his choice between the two, Smith would cheerfully have faced another hand-to-hand battle with the claim jumpers in preference to even so mild a dip into the former things as the dinner at Hillcrest foreshadowed. The reluctance was not forced; it was real. The primitive man in him did not wish to be entertained. On the fast auto drive down to Brewster, across the bridge, and out to the Baldwin ranch, Smith’s humor was frankly sardonic. He cherished a small hope that Mrs. Baldwin might be shocked at, the soft shirt and the khakL It would serve her right for taking a man from his job. At the stone-pillared portal he got out to open the gates. Down the road a horse was coming at a smart s°Hop, the rider, Corona Baldwin,

oootea ana spurred and riding a man’s saddle. Smith let the gray car go on its way up the drive without him. “So you weakened, did you? rm disappointed in you,” was Miss Baldwin’s greeting. “You’ve made me lose my bet with colonel-daddy. I said you wouldn’t come." “I had no business to come,” he answered morosely. “But your father wouldn’t let me off.” “Of course he wouldn’t; daddy never lets anybody off, unless they owe him money. Where are your evening clothes?” Smith let the lever of moroseness slip back to the grinning notch. “They are about two thousand miles aw’ay, and probably in some second-hand shop by this time. What makes you think I ever wore a dress suit?” He had closed the gates and was w’alklng beside her horse up the driveway. “Oh, I just guessed it," she returned lightly, “and if you’ll hold your breath, I’ll guess again.” “Don’t,” he laughed. At the a negro stableboy was waiting to take Miss Baldwin’s horse. Smith knew how to help a woman down from a side-saddle; but the twostlrruped rig stumped him. The young woman laughed as she swung out of her saddle to stand beside him. “The women don’t ride that way in your part of the country?” she queried. “Not yet.” “I’m sorry for them,” she scoffed. And then : “Come on in and meet mamma ; you look as if you were dreading It, and, colonel-daddy says, it’s always best to have the dreaded things over with.”

Smith did not find his meeting with the daughter’s mother much of a trial. She was neither shocked at his clothes nor disposed to be hysterically grateful over the railroad-crossing incident. A large, calm-eyed, sensible matron, some ten or a dozen years younger than the colonel, Smith put her, and with an air of refinement wiilch was reflected in every interior detail of her house. The dinner was strictly a family meal, with the great mahogany table shortened to make it convenient for four. There were cut glass and silver and snowy napery. Out of the past a thousand tentacles were reaching up to drag Smith back into the net of the conventional. When the table-talk became general, he found himself joining in, and always upon the lighter side. He found himself drawn more and more to the calm-eyed, well-bred matron who had given a piquant Corona to an otherwise commonplace world. Mrs. Baldwin saw nothing of the rude fighter of battles her daughter had drawn for her, and wondered a little. She knew Corona’s leanings, and was not without an amused impression that Corona would not find this later Smithsonian phase altogether to her liking. Smith got what he had earned, good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, a few minutes after Mrs. Baldwin had left him to finish his cigar under the pillared portico with Corona to keep him company. He never knew just what started it, unless it was his careful placing of a chair for the young woman and his deferential—and perfectly natural —pause, standing, until she was seated. “Do, for pity’s sake, sit down!” she broke out, half petulantly. And when he had obeyed: “Well, you’ve spoiled it all, good and hard.” Smith was unable to Imagine wherein he had offended. “Really?” he said. “What have I done?” “It isn’t what you’ve done; it’s what you are,” she retorted. “You have committed the unpardonable sin by turning out to be just one of the ninety-nine, after alk If you knew women the least little bit in the world, you •would know that we are always looking for the hundredth man.” Under his smile, Smith was beginning to understand what this aston-

ishlngly frank young ■woman meant. She had seen his relapse, and was calmly deriding him for it. “You may pile it on as thickly as you please,” he said, the good-natured smile twisting lts,elf into the construc-tion-camp grin. Then, with malice aforethought: “Is it one of the requirements that your centennial man should behave himself like a boor at a dinner table, and talk shop and eat with his knife?” “You know that isn’t what I meant. Manners don’t, make the man- It’s what you talked about —the trumpery little social things that you found your keenest pleasure In talking about. I don’t know what has ever taken you out to a construction camp. I don’t believe you ever did a day's hard work in your life before you came to the Ti manront”

It was growing dark by this time, and the stars were coming out. Some-, one had turned the lights on in the room the windows of which opened upon the portico, and the young worn-: an’s chair waS so placed that he could still see her face. She was smiling rather more amicably when she said: “You mustn’t take It too hard. It Isn’t you, personally, you know; It’s the type. I’ve met It before. I didn’t meet any other kind during my three years in the boarding school; nice, pleasant young gentlemen, as immaculately dressed as their pocketbooks would allow, up in all the latest little courtesies and tea-table shop talkThey were all men, I suppose, but I'm afraid a good many of them had never found it out—will never find It out. I’ve been calling it environment; I don’t like to admit that the race is going downhill.” By this time the sardonic humor was once more In full possession, and he was enjoying her keenly. “Go on,” he said, “This is my night off.” “I’ve said enough; too much, perhaps. But when you were walking with mamma, you reminded me so forcibly of a man whom I met just for a part of one evening about a year ago in a small town In the middle West. He was one of them. He drove over from some neighboring town in his natty little automobile, and gave me fully an hour of his valuable time. He made me perfectly furious !” “Poor you!” laughed Smith; but he was thankful that the camp sunburn and his four weeks' beard were safeguarding "his identity. “But why the fury in his case in'particular?* “Just because, I suppose. I remember he told me he was a bank cashier and that he danced. He was quite hopeless, of course. Without being what you would call conceited, you could see that the crust was so thick that nothing short of an earthquake w’ould ever break it.”

“But the earthquakes do come, once In a blue moon,” he said, still smiling at her. “Let’s get* it straight. You are not trying to tell me that you object to decent clothes and good manners per se, are you?” The colonel was coming out, and he had stopped in the doorway to light a long-stemmed pipe. The young woman got up and fluffed her hair with the ends of her fingers—a little gesturl which Smith remembered, recalling It from the night of the far-away lawn party. “Daddy wants you, and I'll have to vanish,” she said; “but I’ll answer your question before I go. Types are always hopeless; it’s only the hundredth man who Isn’t. It’s a great pity you couldn’t go on whipping claim jumpers all the rest of your life, Mr. Smith. Don’t you think so? Good night. We’ll meet again at breakfast. Daddy Isn’t going to let you get away short of a night’s lodging, I know." Two cigars for Smith and four pipes for the colonel further along, the tall Missourian rose out of the split-bot-tomed chair which hejiad drawn up to face the guest’s and rapped the ashes from the bowl of the corncob into the palm of his hand. “I think you’ve got It all now, Smith, every last crook and turn of It, and I reckon you’re tired enough to run away to bed." ■- Smith took a turn up and down the stone-flagged floor of the portico with his hands behind him. Truly, the case of Tlmanyonl ditch was desperate; even more desperate than he had supposed. Figuring as the level-headed bank cashier of the former days, he told himself soberly that no man In his senses would touch It with a tenfoot pole. Then the laughing gibes of the hundredth woman —gibes which had cut far deeper than she had Imagined —came back to send the blood surging through his veins. It would be worth something to be able to work the miracle the colonel had spoken of; and afterward . . . Colonel Dexter Baldwin was still tapping his palm absently with the pipe when Smith came back and said abruptly: “I have decided, colonel. I’ll start In with you tomorrow morning, and we’ll pull this mired scheme of yours out of the mud, or I'll break a leg trying to. But you mustn’t forget what I told you out at the camp. Bight In the middle of things I may go rotten on you and drop out.” (TO BE CONTINUED.)

"They Looked Like a Bunch of Hired Assassins.

“You Have Committed the Unpardonable Sin."