Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 58, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 October 1917 — The Real Man [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Real Man

By francis Lynde

SYNOPSIS. CHAPTER I—J. Montague Smith, Lawfenc'eville 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 Timanyoni 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 the eolonel’s daughter Corona. CHAPTER Vl—While Corona looks on he drives off three bogus mining right claimants from the company’s land.

CHAPTER VIII. The Sick Project. Brewster had grown into city-charter size and importance with the opening of the gold mines in the Gloria district, and the transformation of the surrounding park grasslands into cultivated ranches. A summer hotel on the shore of Lake Topaz —reached only by stage from Brewster —had added its influence; and since the hotel brought people with well-lined pocketbooks, there was a field for the enthusiastic real-estate promoters whose offices filled all the odd corners in the Hophra House block. In one of those offices, on the morning following Smith’s first dinner at Hillcrest, a rather caustic colloquy was in progress between the man whose name appeared in gilt lettering on the front windows and one of his unofficial assistants. Crawford Stanton, he of the window name, was a man of many personalities. To summer visitors with money to invest, he was the genial promoter, and if there

were suggestions of iron hardness In the sharp jaw and in the smoothly shaven face and flinty eyes, there was also a pleasant reminder of Eastern business methods and alertness in the promoter’s manner. But Lanterby, tilting uneasily in the “confidential” chair at the desk-end, knew another and more biting side of Mr. Stanton, as a hired man will. “Good heaven! do you sit there and tell me that the three of them let that hobo of Williams’ push them off the map? And do you say all this happened the day before yesterday: how does it come that you are just now reporting it?” V The hard-faced henchman in the tilting chair made such explanations as he could. “Boogerfleld and his two partners’ve been hidin’ out somewhere; I allow they was plumb ashamed to come in and tell how they’d let one man run ’em off.” “What do you know about this fellow Smith? Who is he, and where did he come from?” Lanterby told all that was known of Smith, and had no difficulty in compressing it into a single sentence. Stanton leaned back in his chair and the lids of the flinty eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “+ “There’s a lot more to It than that,” he said incisively at the end of the reflective pause. Then he added a curt order: “Make it your job to find out.”

Lanterby moved uneasily in his insecure seat, but before he could speak, his employer went on again, changing the topic abruptly, but still keeping within the faultfinding boundaries. “What sort of a screw has" gone loose in your deal with the railroad men? Williams got two cars of cement and one of steel the day before yesterday three hours after the stuff came in from the East.” Again Lanterby tried to explain. “Dougherty, the yardmaster, took the bank roll I slipped him, all right enough, and promised to help out. But he’s scared of Maxwell.” “Maxwell is a thick-headed ass!” exploded the faultfinder. “His entire railroad outfit, from President Brewster dawn, is lined up on the other side of the fight. But go on with your ■dickering. Jerk Dougherty Into line. Now go out and find Shaw. I want him, and I want him right now.” The hard-faced man who looked as if he might be a broken-down gambler, unjointed his leg-hold upon the tilted chair and went out ; and a few minutes later another of Stanton’s pay-roll men drifted in. He was a young fellow with sleepy eyes and cigarette stains on his fingers, and he would have passed for a railroad clerk out of a •job, which was what he really was. “Well?” snapped Stanton when the

incomer had taken the chair lately vacated by Lanterby. “I shadowed the colonel, as you told me to,” said the young man. “He went up to Red Butte to see if he couldn’t rope in some of the old-timers on his ditch project. He was trying to sell some treasury stock. His one-horse company is about out of money. Mickle, a clerk in Kinxie’s tells me that the ditch company’s balance is drawn down to a few thousand dollars, with no more coming in.” “Did the colonel succeed in making a raise in Red Butte?”

“Nary,” said the spy nonchalantly. “Drake, the banker up there, was his one best bet; but I got a man I know to give Drake a pointer, and he curled up like a hedgehog when you poke it with a sharp stick.” “That’s better. The colonel came back yesterday, didn’t he?” “Yesterday afternoon. His wife and daughter met him, and told him something or other that made him drive up to the dam.” “You followed?” queried Stanton. “Yes, and when I got there the colonel was shut up in Williams’ office with a fellow named Smith. When I got a place to listen in they were getting ready to quit, and the colonel was saying: ‘That settles it, Smith; you’ve got to come over into’ —I didn’t catch the name of the place—‘and help us.’ ”

Again the gentleman with the sharp jaw took time for narrow-eyed reflection. “You’ll have to switch over from the colonel to this fellow Smith for the present, Shaw,” he decided, at length. “You look him up and do it quick.” The young man glanced up with a faint warming of avarice in his sleepy eyes. “It’ll most likely run into money —for expenses,” he suggested. “For graft, you mean,” snapped Stanton. Then he had it out with this second subordinate in crisp English. “I’m onto you with both feet, Shaw; every crook and turn of you. More than that, I know why you were fired out of Maxwell’s office; you’ve got sticky fingers. That’s all right with me up to a certain point, but beyond that point you get off. Understand?” Shaw made no answer in direct terms, but if his employer had been watching the heavy-lidded eyes, he might have seen in them the shadow of a thing much more dangerous than plain dishonesty : a passing shadow of the fear that makes for treachery when the sharp need for self-protec-tion arises. “I’ll try to find out about the hobo,” he said, with fair enough lip-loyalty, and after he had rolled a fresh cigarette he went away to begin the mining operations which might promise to unearth Smith’s record. It was ten o’clock when Shaw left the real-estate office in the Hophra House block. Half an hour earlier Smith had come to town with the colonel in the roadster, and the two had shut themselves up in the colonel’s private room in the Timanyonl Ditch company’s town office In the Barker building, which was two squares down the street from the Hophra house. Summoned promptly, Martin, the bookkeeper, had brought In his statements and balance sheets,

and the new officer, who was as yet without a title, had struck out his plan of campaign. “ ‘Amortization,’ is the word, colonel,” was Smith’s prompt verdict after he had gone over Martin’s summaries. “The best way to get at it now is to wipe the slate clean and begin over again.” The ranchman president was chuckling soberly. “Once more you’ll have to show me,-John,” he said. “We folks out here In the hills are not up in the Wall street crinkles.” “You don’t know the Word? It

means to scrap the old machinery to make room for the new,” Smith explained. “In modern business it Is the process of extinguishing a corporation: closing it up and burying it In another and bigger one, usually. That Is what we must do with Tlmanyoni Ditch.” “I’m getting you, a little at a time,” colonel, taking his first lesson in high finance as a duck takes to the water. Then he added: “It won’t take much of a lick to kill off the old company, in the shape it’s got into now. How will you work it?” Smith had the plan at his fingers’ ends. With the daring of all the perils had come a fresh access of fighting fitness that made him feel as if he could cope with anything. “We must close up the company’s affairs and then reorganize promptly and, with just as little noise as may be, form another company—which we will call Timanyoni High Line —and let it take over the old outfit, stock, liabilities and assets entire. You say your present capital stock is one hundred thousand dollars. This new company that I am speaking of will be capitalized at, say, an even half million. To the present holders of Timanyoni Ditch we’ll give the new stock for the old, share for share, with a ’ onus of twenty-five shares of the new stock for every twenty-five shares of the old surrendered and exchanged.

This will be practically giving the present shareholders two for one. Will that satisfy them?” This time Colonel Dexter Baldwin’s smile was grim. “You’re just juggling now, John, and you know it. Out here on the woolly edge of things a dollar is just a plain iron dollar, and you can’t make it two merely by calling it so.” “Never you mind about that,” cut in the new financier. “At two to one for the amortization of the old company we shall still have something like three hundred thousand dollars treasury stock upon which to realize for the new capital needed, and that will be amply sufficient to complete the dam and the ditches and to provide a fighting fund. Now then, tell me this: how near can we come to placing that treasury stock right here in Timanyoni Park? It’s up to us to keep this thing in the family, so to speak; and the moment we go into other markets we are getting over into the enemy’s country. I’m not saying that the money couldn’t be raised in New York; but if we should go there, the trust would have an underhold on us, right from the start.” “I see,” said the colonel, who was indeed seeing many things that his simple-hearted philosophy had never dreamed of; and then he answered the direct question. “There is plenty of money right here In the Timanyonis.” Smith nodded. He was getting his second wind now, and the race promised to be a keen joy. “But they would have to be ‘shown,’ you think?” he suggested. “All right; we’ll proceed to show them. Now we can come down to present necessities. We’ve got to keep the work going—and speed it up to the limit: wt ought to double Williams’ force at once —put on a night shift to work by electric light.” The colonel blinked twice and swallowed hard. “Say, John.” he said, leaning across the table-desk; “you’ve sure got your nerve with you. Do you know our present bank balance is under five thousand dollars, and a good part of that is owing to the cement people!” “Never mind; don’t get nervous,” was the reassuring rejoinder. “We are going to make it bigger in a few minutes, I hope. Who is your banker here?” “Dave Kinzie of the Brewster City National.” “Tell me a little something about Mr. Kinzie before we go down to see him; just brief him for me as a man, I mean.” The colonel was shaking his head slowly.

“He’s what you might call a twentyton optimist, Dave Is; solid, a little slow and sure, but the biggest boomer in the West, if you can get him started —believes in the resources of the country and all that. But you can’t borrow money from him without security, if that’s what you’re aiming to do.” “Can’t we?” smiled the young man who knew banks and bankers. “Let's go and see. You may introduce me to Kinzie as your acting financial secretary, if you like. Now one more question : What is Kinzle’s attitude toward Timanyoni Ditch?” “At first he was all kinds of friendly; he is a stockholder in a small way. But after a while he began to cool down a little, and now—well, I don’t know; I hate to think it of Dave, but I’m afraid he’s leaning the other way, toward these Eastern fellows. He tried to cover Stanton’s tracks in the stock-buying from Gardner and Bolling.” “That is natural, too,” said Smith, whose point of view was always unobscured in any battle of business. “The big company would be a better customer for the bank than ybur little one could ever hope to be. I- guess that’s all for the present.' If you’re ready, we’ll go down and face the music.” “By Janders!” said the colonel with an open smile; “I believe you’d just as soon tackle a banker as to eat your dinner; and I’d about as soon take a horse whipping. Come on; I’ll steer you up against Dave, but I’m telling you right now that the steering is about all you can count on from me.” It was while they were crossing the street together that Mr. Crawford Stanton had his third morning caller, it thickset, barrel-bodied man with little piglike eyes, closely cropped hair, 1 1 bristling mustache, and a wooden

or the homemade sort. The men of the camps called the cripple “Pegleg” or “Bine Pete” Indifferently, though not to his face. "For though the fat face was always relaxed In a good-natured smile, the crippled saloonkeeper was of those who kill with the knife. Stanton looked up from his desk when the pad-and-cllck of the cripple’s step came In from the street. “Hello, Simms,” he said, In curt greeting. “Want to see me? Sit down.” Simms threw the brim of his soft hat up with a backhanded stroke and Shook his head. “It ain’t worth while; and I gotta get back to camp. I blew In to tell y’u there’s a fella out there that needs th’ sandbag.” “Who is it?” “Fella name’ Smith. He’s showin’ ’em how to cut too many corners—-paee-settin’, lie calls It. First thing they know, they’ll get the concrete up to where the high water won’t bu’st It out.”

Stanton’s laugh was impatient. “Don’t make any mistake of that sort, Simms," he said. “We don’t want the dam destroyed; we’d work just as hard as they would to prevent that. All we want is to have other people think it’s likely to go out—think it hard enough to keep them from putting up any more money. Let that go. Ts there any more fresh talk —among the men?" Stanton prided himself a little upon the underground wire-pull-ing which had resulted in putting Simms on the ground as the keeper of the construction-camp canteen. It was a fairly original way of keeping a listening ear open for the camp gossip. “Little," said the cripple briefly. "This here blink-blank fella Smith’s been tellln’ Williams that I ort to be run off th’ reservation; says th’ booze puts the brake on for speed.” “So it does,” agreed Stanton ingly. “But I guess you can stay a while longer. I have a notion that Smith’s been sent here—by some outfit that means to buck us. If he hasn’t any backing— The interruption was the hurried incoming of the young man with sleepy eyes and the cigarette stains on his fingers, and for once in a way he was stirred out of his customary attitude of cynical indifference./ “Smith and Colonel Baldwin are over yonder in Kinzle’s private office,” he reported hastily. “Before they shut the door I heard Baldwin Introducing Smith as the new acting financial secretary of the Timanyoni Ditch company !” (TO BE CONTINUED.)

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"Try to Find Out About the Hobo."