Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 78, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1917 — The Real Man [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Real Man

CHAPTER I—J. Montagne 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 H—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 nea r 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 colonel's daughter Corona. CHAPTER Vl—While Corona looks on he drives off three bogus mining right claimants from the company’s land. CHAPTER Vll—The colonel takes Smith to his home and persuades him, in spite of Smith’s warning, to undertake the financial salvation of the company. CHAPTER VHl—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 i company and gets a loan from Kinzie, 1 the local banker. CHAPTER X—ln the midst of a “mlra- | cle-working” campaign Corona asks , Smith alarming questions. He reads that Dunham, still living, has doubled the re- I jward for his capture. CHAPTER Xl—Smith gets encourage- j ment in his fight from Corona, but realizes that he must stay away from her. Vera Richlander and her father come to Brewster. |

CHATTER 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 of 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 fail to learn about Smith from Vera. Stanton makes some night visits and is trailed. On the day following the hindering concrete failure at the dam, Smith gave still more color to the charges of his detractors in the business field. Those whose affairs brought them in contact with him found a man suddenly grown years older and harder, boody and harshly dictatorial, not to say quarrelsome; a man who seemed to have parted, in the short space of a single night, with all of the humanizing affabilities which he had shown to such a marked degree in the reorganizing and refinancing of the irrigation project. “We’ve got our young Napoleon of finance on the toboggan slide, at last,” was the way in which Mr. Crawford Stanton phrased it for the bejeweled lady at their luncheon in the Hophra case. “Kinzie is about to throw him over, and all this talk about botchwork on the dam is getting his goat. They’re telling it around town this morning that you can’t get near him without risking a fight. Old Man Backus went up to his office in behalf of

a bunch of the scared stockholders, and Smith abused him first and then threw him out«bqdily—-hurt him pretty savagely, they say.” The large lady’s accurately penciled eyebrows went up in mild surprise. “Bad temper?” she queried.. “Bad temper, or an acute attack of ‘rattlcitisyou can take your choice. I suppose he hasn’t, by any chance, quarreled with Miss Richlander overnight?—or has he?” The fat lady shook het diamonds. “I should say not. They were at luncheon together in the ladies’ ordinary as I came down a few minutes ago.” Thus the partner of Crawford Stanton’s joys and sorrows. But an invisible onlooker in the small dining room above-stairs might have drawn other conclusions. Smith and the daughter of the Lawrenceville magnate had a small table to themselves, and if the

CobyriqhT CRa3.3cribner!s Sontf

By Francis Lynde

IllusiraUonS OlrwinMjerA

talk were not precisely quarrelsome, it leaned that way at times. “I have never seen you quite so brutal and impossible as you are today, Montague. Y'ou don’t seein like the same man. Are you going to reconsider and take me out to the Baldwin ranch this .afternoon ?” “And let you parade me there as your latest acquisition?—never in this world !” “More brutality. Positively you are getting me into a frame of mind in which Tucker Jibbey will seem like a blessed relief. Whatever do you suppose has become of Tucker?” “How should I know?” “If he had come in last night, and you had met him —as I asked you to — in any such heavenly temper as you are indulging now, I might think you had murdered him.” It was doubtless by sheer accident that Smith, reaching at the moment for the salad oil, overturned his water glass. But the small accident by no means accounted for the sudden graying of his face under the Timanyoni wind tan —for that or for the shaking hands with which he seconded the waiter’s anxious efforts to repair the damage. When thqy were alone again, the momentary trepidation had given place to a renewed hardness that lent a biting rasp to his voice. “Kinzie, the suspicious old banker that I’ve been telling you about, is determined to run me down,” he said, changing the subject .abruptly. “I’ve got it j?retty straight that he is planning to send one of his clerks to the Topaz district to try and find your father, in the hope that he will tell what he knows about me.”

“Does this Mr. Kinzie know where father is to be found?” “He doesn’t; that’s the only hitch.” Miss Verda’s smile across the little table was level-eyed’. “I could be lots of help to you, Montague, in this fight you are making, if you’d only let me,” she suggested. . “I’ll fight for my own hand,” was the grating rejoinder. “I can assure you, right now, that Kinzie’s messenger will never reach your father —alive.” “Ooh!” shuddered the beauty, with a little lift of the rounded shoulders. “How utterly and hopelessly primitive! Let me show you a much simpler alternative. I have a map of the mining district, you know. Father left it with me —in case I should want to communicate with him.” Smith looked up with a smile which was a mere baring of the teeth. “You wouldn’t get in a man’s way with any fine-spun theories of the ultimate right and wrong, would you? You wouldn’t say that the only great man is the man who loves his fellow men, and all that?” Again the handsome shoulders were lifted, this time in cool scorn. “Are you quoting the little ranch person?” she inquired. Then she answered his query: “The only great men worth speaking of are the men who win. For the lack of something bettdr to do, I’m willing to help you win, Montague. Most naturally, I am the one who would know where my father is to be found. And I have changed my mind about wanting to to the Baldwins’. We’ll compromise on the play—if there is a play.” “There is a play, and I have the seats,” he announced briefly. “Merci!” she flung back. “Small favors thankfully received, and large ores in proportion; though it’s hardly a favor, this time, because I have paid for it in advance. Mr. Kinzie’s young man came to see me this morning.” “What did you do?” “I gave him a tracing of my map, and he was so grateful it made me want to tell him that it was all wrong; that he wouldn’t find father in a month if he followed the directions.” . “But you didffT r”™" “No; I can play the game, when it seems worth while.” Smith was frowning thoughtfully when he led her to the elevator alcove. “My way would have been the surer,” he muttered, half to himself. “Barbarian!” she laughed; and then: “To think that you were once a ‘debutantes’ darling!’ Oh, yes; I know it was Carter Westfall who said it first, but it was true enough to name you instantly for all Lawrenceville.” (TO BE CONTINUED.)

“There Is a Limit, Verda.”