Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 76, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 December 1917 — The Real Man [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Real Man

By Francis Lynde

Illustrations by OJrwinMgera

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 tummons 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 aggree-* eive. 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 e.t 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 nea 7- ruin. Smith is jokingly suggested as a financial doctor. CHAPTER Vll—The colonel takes Smith to his home and persuades him, in spite of Smith’s warning, to undertake tne financial salvation of the company. CHAPTER Vlll—Crawford Stanton, hired by eastern interests to kill off the ditch company, sets his spies to work to find out who Smith is. CHAPTER IX—Smith reorganizes the company and gets a loan from Kinzie, the local banker. CHAPTER X—ln the midst of a ••mira-cle-working” campaign Corona asks Smith alarming questions. He reads that Dunham, still living, has doubled the reWard for his capture. CHAPTER Xl—Smith gets encouragement in his fight from Corona, but realizes that he must stay away from her. Vera Richlander and her father come to Brewster. CHAPTER Xll—Smith tells Corona of his danger. He hears the Richlanders have gone up to the mines. He hires a new stenographer, Shaw, who is a spy ©f Stanton’s. CHAPTER XIII—He meets Vera, who lias not gone away with her father. She exacts almost constant attendance from him as the price of her silence. - CHAPTER XlV—Stanton and his wife fall to learn about Smith from * era. Stanton makes some night visits and is trailed.

CHAPTER XVI. At Any Cost. With all things moving favorably for Timanyoni High Line up to the night of fiascos, the battle for the great water-right seemed to take a sudden slant against the local promoters, after the failure to cripple Stanton by the ! attempt to suppress two of his subordi- ' nates. Early the next day there were panicky rumors in the air, none of them traceable to any definite starting pointOne of the stories was to' the effect that the Timanyoni dam had faulty foundations and that the haste in building had added to its insecurity. On the heels of this came clamorous court petitions from ranch owners below the dam. site, setting forth the flood dangers to which they were exposed and praying for an injunction to , stop the work. That this was a new move on Stanton’s part, neither Smith nor Stillings ■ questioned for a moment; but they no j sooner got the nervous ranchmen pacified by giving an indemnity bond for ( any damage that might be dope, than other rumors sprang up. For one day j and yet another Smith fought meehan- , ically, developing the machinelike doggedness of tlue soldier who sees the battle going irresistibly against him and still smites on in sheer despera- \ tion. He saw the carefully built or- ; ganization structure, reared by his own efforts upon the foundation laid by Colonel Baldwin and his ranchman as- j sociates, falling to pieces. In spite of all he could do, there was a panic of stock-selling; the city council, alarmed by tficr persistent story of the unsafety of the dam, was threatening to cancel the lighting contract with Timanyoni High Line; and Kinzie, though he was doing nothing openly, had caused the word to be passed far and wide among the Timanyoni stockholders, disaster could be averted now only by prompt action and the swift effacement of their rule-or-ruin secretary and treasurer. “They’re after you, John,” was the way the colonel put it at the close of the second day of back-slippings. “They say you’re fiddlin’ while Rome's aburnin’. Maybe you know what they mean by that; I don’t.” Smith did know. During the two days of stress Miss Verda had been very ex actings There had been another night at the theater and much timekilling after meals in the parlors of the Hophra Worse still, there had been a daylight auto trip about town and up to the dam. The victim was writhing miserably under the pricepaying, but there seemed to be no help for it. Since the night of Verda Richlander’s arrival in Brewster, he had not seen Corona; he was telling himself that he had forfeited the right to see her. Out of the chaotic wreck of things but one driving motive had survived, and it had grown to the stature of an obsession: the determination to wring victory out of defeat for Timanyoni High Line; to fall, if he must fall, fighting to the last gasp and with his face to the enemy. “I know,” he said, replying, after the reflective pause, to the charge passed on by Colonel Dexter. “There is a

friend of mine here from the East, and I have been obliged to show her some attention, so they say I am neglecting my job. They are also talking it around that I am your Jonah, and sajk, ing that your only hope is to pitch me overboard.” “That’s Dave Kinzie,” growled the Missourian. “He seems to have it in for you. some way.” “Nevertheless, he was right,” Smith returned gloomily. Then: “I am about at the end of my rope, colonel —the rope I warned you about when you brought me here and put me into the saddle; and I’m trying desperately to hang on until my job’s done. When it is done, when Timanyoni High Line can stand fairly on its own feet and fight its own battles, I’m gone.” “Oh, no, you’re not,” denied the ranchman-president in generous protest. “Yon come on out home with me tonight and get away from this muddle for a few minutes. It’ll do you a heap of good; you know it always does.” I Smith shook his head reluctantly bul firmly. | “Never again, colonel. It can only be a matter of a few days now, and I’m

not going to pull you and your wife and daughter into the limelight if I can help it.” j Colonel Dexter got out of his chair and walked to the office window. When he came back it was to say: “Are thej sure-enough chasing you, John? —for something that you have done? Is that what you're trying to tell me?” “That is it—and they are nearly here. Now you know at least one of the rea-1 sons why I can’t go with you tonight.’’, “I’ll be shot if I do !” stormed the generous one. “I promised the missus I'd bring you.” “You must make my excuses to her; and to Corona you may say that I am, once more carrying a gun. She will un- ' derstand.” “Which means, I take it, that you’ve been telling Corry more than you’ve told the rest Of us. That brings on more talk, John. I haven’t said a word before, have I?” “No.” “Well, Tm going to say it now: I’ve got only just one daughter in the wide, I wide world, John.” | Smith stood up and put his hands. behind him, facing the older man' squarely. “Colonel, I’d give ten years of my life, this minute, if I might go with you 1 to Hillcrest this evening and tell Co-j rona what I have been wanting to tell her ever since I have come to know ■, what her love might make of me. The j fact that I can’t do it is the bitterest; thing I have ever had to face, or can ever be made to face.” Colonel Baldwin fell back into his swing-chair and thrust his hands into, his pockets. “It beats the Dutch how things tangle themselves up for us poor mor- ( tals every little so-while,” he com-1 mented, after a frowning pause. And I then: “You haven’t said anything like that to Corry, have you ?” “No.” “That was white, anyway. And now I suppose the other woman —this Miss Rich-something-or-other over at the hotel —has come and dug you up and got you on the end of her trailing rope. That’s the way it goes when a man mixes and mingles too much. You never can tell — ’ “Hold on,” Smith interposed. “Whatever else I may be, I’m not that kind of a scoundrel. I don’t owe Miss Riehlander anything that I can’t pay without doing injustice to the woman I love. But in another way I am a scoundrel, eolonel. For the past two days I have been contemptible enough to play upon a woman’s vanity merely for the sake,of keeping her from talking too much.” The grizzfcd old ranchman shook his head sorrowfully. “I didn’t think that of you, John; I sure didn’t. Why, that’s what you

might call a low-down, tin-hofn sort of a game.” “It is just that, and I know It as well as you do. But It’s the price I have to pay for my few days of grace. Miss Richlander knows the Stantons; they’ve made it their business to get acquainted with her. One word from her to Crawford Stanton, and a wire from him to my home tpwn in the middle West would settle me.” The older man straightened himself in his chair, and his steel-gray eyes blazed suddenly. “Break away from ’em, John!” he urged. “Break it off short, and let ’em all do their worst! Away along at the first, Williams and I both said you wasn’t a crooked crook, and I m believing it yet. When it comes to the show-down, we’ll all fight for you, ami they’ll have to bring a derrick along if they want to snatch you out of the Timanyoni. You go over yonder to the Hophra House and tell that young woman that the bridle’s off, and she can talk all she wants to!”

“No,” said Smith shortly. “I know what I am doing, and I shall go on as I have begun. It’s the only way. Matters are desperate enough with us now, an<\ if I should drop out —” The telephone bell was ringing, and Baldwin twisted his chair to bring himself within reach of the desk set. -The message was a brief one, and at its finish the ranchman-president was frowning heavily. “By Jupiter! it does seem as if the bad luck all comes in a bunch!” lie protested, “Williams was rushing things just a little too fast, and they’ve lost a whole section of the dam by stripping the forms lief ore the concrete was set. That puts us back another twenty-four hours, at least. Don’t that, beat the mischief?” ; : Smith reached for his hat. “It’s six o’clock,” he said; “and Williams’ formstrippers have furnished one more reason why I shouldn’t keep Miss Richlander waiting for her dinner.” And with that he cut the talk short and went his way. With a blank evening before her, Miss Richlander, making the tete-a-tete dinner count for what it would, tightened her hold upon the one man available, demanding excitement. Nothing else offering, she suggested an evening auto drive, and Smith dutifully telephoned Maxwell, the railroad superintendent, aDd borrowed a runabout. Smith drove the borrowed runabout in sober silence, and the glorious beauty in the seat beside him did not try to make him talk. Perhaps she, too, was busy with thoughts of her own. At all events, when Smith had helped her out of the car at the hotel entrance and had seen her as far as the elevator, she thanked him half absently and took his excuse, that he-must return’ the runabout to Maxwell’s garage, without laying any further commatds upon him. Just as he was turning away, a bellooy came across from the clerk’s desk with a telegram for Miss Richlander. Smith had no excuse for lingering, but with the air thick with threats he made the tipping of the boy answer for a momentary stop-gap. Miss Verda tore the envelope open and read the inclosure with a fine-lined little frown coming and going between her eyes.

“It’s from Tucker Jibbey,” she said, glancing up at Smith. “Someone has told him where we are, and he is following us. He says he’ll be here on the evening train. Will you meet him and tell him I’ve gone to bed?” At the mention of Jibbey, the moneyspoiled son of the man who stood next :o Josiah Richlander in the credit rat,ngs, and Lawrenceville’s best imitation of a flaneur, Smith’s first emotion was one of relief at the thought that libbey would at least divide time with dim in the entertainment of the bored beauty; then he remembered that Jibbey had once considered him a rival, and that the sham “rounder’s” presence in Brewster would constitute a menace more threatening than all the others put together. “I can’t meet Tucker,” he said bluntly. “You know very well I can’t.” “That’s so,” was the quiet reply. “Of course you can’t. What will you do when he comes? —run away?” “No; I can’t do that, either. I shall Keep out of his way, If 1, can. If he finds me and makes any bad breaks, he’ll get what’s coming to him. If he’s worth anything to you, you’ll put him on the stage in, the morning and send him up Into the mountains to join your father.” “The idea!” she laughed. “He’s not coming out here to see father. Poor Tucker! If he could only know what he is in for!” Then: “It is beginning to look as if you might have to go still deeper in debt to me, Montague. There is one more thing I’d like to do before I leave Brewster. If I’ll promise to keep Tucker away from you, will you drive me out to the Baldwins’ tomorrow afternoon? I want to see the colonel’s fine horses, and he has invited me, you know.” Smith’s eyes darkened. “There Is a limit, Verda, and you’ve reached it,” he said quickly. “If the colonel invited you to HiHcrest, it was because you didn’t leave him any chance not to. I resign in favor of Jibbey,” and with that he handed her into the waiting elevator and said, “Goodnight.” (TO BE CONTINUED.!

“Are They Sure-Enough Chasing You John?”