Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 80, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 January 1918 — The Real Man [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Real Man

By Franis Lynde

Illustrations by OlrwinMyera

SYNOPSIS. CHAPTER I—J. 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 sumrnons 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 Hl—Near Brewster. Colo., Dexter Baldwin, president of the Timanyoni Ditch company, gets Smith an offlee Job at the big dam the company la building. CHAPTER TV—Wallife—ss. chief engineer, finds the hobo Smith used to money tn 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 colonel's daughter Corona. CHAPTER Vl—While Corona looks on he drives off three bogus mining right y claimants from the company's land. CHAPTER Vn—The colonel takes Bmith to his home and persuades him, in spite of Smith’s warning, to undertake ghe financial salvation of the company. CHAPTER VUl—Crawford Stanton, tired by eastern interests to kin off the flitch company, sets his spies to work to find out who Smith is. CHAPTER IX—Smith reorganize ths 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 Thin ham. still living, has doubled the regard 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 ter father come to Hrewster. CHAPTER Xll—Smith tells Corona of bls danger. He hears the Richianders have gone up to the mines. He hires a kiew stenographer, Shaw, who is a spy of Stanton’s. CHAPTER XIII-He meets Vera, who fcas not gone away with her father. She | exacts almost constant attendance from i Mm as the price of her silence. CHAPTER XlV—Stanton and his wife . fail to learn about Smith from v era. , etantbn makes some night visits and is trailed. CHAPTER XV—Smith tells Starbuck of the time limit on the dam. Starbuck cautions him about Vera and tells him of a plot to kill him or blow up the dam. They catch Shaw listening, but he escapes. CHAPTER XVl—Rsntaors that the dam ks unsafe cause a stock-selling panic. | Smith tells the colonel of his entanglement with Vera and the colonel wants to Set her talk if she wants to. She tells Smith that Tucker Jibbey. another suitor, Who knows Smith, is coming to visit her.

CHAPTER XVII. The Megalomaniac. Sixty-odd hours before the expiration of the time limit, Bartley Williams, ; lean and somber-eyed from the strain be had been under for many days and nights, saw the president's gray roadster plowing its way through the mesa . sand on the approach to the construction camp, and was glad. “I’ve been trying all the morning to squeeze out time to get into town,” he told Baldwin, when the roadster came to a stand in front of the shack commissary. “Where is Smith?” The coloned threw up his hand in a gesture expressive of complete detachment. “Don’t ask me. John has gone plumb loco in these last two or three days. It’s as much as your life’s worth to him where he has been or where he is going or what he means to do next.” “He hasn’t stopped fighting?" said the engineer, half aghast at the bare J possibility. “Oh, no; he is at it harder than j ever —going it just a shaving too J 'strong, is what rd tell him, if he'd let , me get near enough to shout at him. Last night, after the theater, he went i around to the Herald office, and the | way they’re talking it on the street, he was aiming to shoot up the whole newspaper joint if Mark Allen, the editor, wouldn’t take back a bunch of the lies he’s been publishing about the High Line. It wound up in a scrap of some sort. I don’t know who got the worst of it, but John isn’t crippled up any, to speak of, this morning—only i in his temper.” Williams shook his head. “I guess we’ll have to stand for the grouch, if I he’ll ohly keep busy. He has the hot end of it We couldn’t very well get along without him, right now, colonel. With all due respect to you and the members of the board, he is the fighting backbone of the whole outfit” “He is that” was Baldwin’s ready admission. “He is just what we’ve been calling him from the first, Bartley —a three-ply, dyed-in-the-wool wonder in his specialty. He is fighting now like a man in the last ditch, and I believe he thinks he is in the last ditch.” “It will be only two days more,” said the engineer, saying it as one who has been counting the days in keen anxiety. And then: “Stillings told me yesterday that we’re not going to get as extension of the time limit from the Mate authorities.”

“No; that little fire went out, blink, just as Smith said it would. Stanton’s backers have the political pull—in the state as well as in Washington. They’re going to hold us to the letter of the law.” “Let ’em do it. We’ll win out yetis we don’t run up against one or both of the only two things I’m afraid of pow: high water, or the railroad calldown.” “The railroad grab? Have you heard anything more about that?” “That is what I was trying to get to town for; to talk the railroad business over with you and Stillings and Smith. They’ve had a gang here this morning—a bunch of engineers, with a stranger, who gave his name as Hallowell. in charge. They claimed to be verifying the old survey, and Hallowell notified me formally that our dam stood squarely in their right of way for a bridge crossing of the river.” “They didn’t serve any papers on you, did they?” inquired the colonel anxiously.

“No; the notice was verbal. But Hallowell wound up with a threat. He said, ‘You’ve had due warning, legally and otherwise, Mr. Williams. This is our right of way, bought and paid for, as we can prove when the matter gets into the courts. You mustn’t be surprised if we take whatever steps may be necessary to recover what belongs to us.’ ” “Force?” queried the Missourian, with a glint of the border fighter’s fire in his eyes.” “Maybe. But we’re ready for that. Did you know that Smith loaded half a dozen cases of new rifles on a motortruck yesterday, and had them sent out here?” “No I” “He did—and told me to say nothing about it. It seems that he ordered them some time ago from an arms agency in Denver. That fellow foresees everything, colonel.” Dexter Baldwin had climbed into his car and was making ready to turn it for the run back to town. “If I were you, Bartley, I believe I’d open up those gun boxes and pass the word among as many of the men as you think you can trust with rifles in their hands. I’ll tell Smith —and Bob Stillings.” Colonel Baldwin saw the company’s* attorney, as soon as he reached Brewster. But Smith was not in his office, and no one seemed to know - had gone. The colonel shrewdly suspected that Miss Richlander was making another draft upon the, secretary’s time, and he said as much to Starbuck, later in the day, when the mine owner sauntered into the High Line headquarters and proceeded to roll the inevitable cigarette. “Not any, this time, colonel,” was Starbuck’s rebuttal. “You’ve missed it by a whole row of apple trees. Miss Rich-dollars is over at the hotel. I saw her at luncheon with the Stantons less than an hour ago.” “You haven’t seen Smith, have you?”

“NO; but I know where he is. He’s out in the country, somewhere, taking the air in Dick Maxwell’s runabout. I wanted to borrow the wagon myself, and Dick told me he had already lent it to Smith.” “We’re needing him,” said the colonel shortly, and then he told Starbuck of the newest development in the paperrailroad scheme of obstruction. From that the talk drifted to a discussion of Kinzie’s latest attitude. By this time there had been an alarming number of stock sales by small holders, all of them handled by the Brewster City National, and it- was plainly evident that Kinzie’ had finally gone over to the enemy and was buying —as cheaply as possible—for some unnamed customer. “If they keep it up, they can wear us out by littles, and we’ll break our necks finishing the dam and saving the franchise only to turn it over to them in the round-up,” said the colonel dejectedly. “I’ve talked until I’m hoarse, but you can’t talk marrow into an empty bone, Billy. I used to think we had a fairly good bunch of men in with, us, but in these last few days I’ve been changing my mind at a foxtrot.” The remainder of tljg day, up to the time when the officesLJEere closing and the colonel was making ready to go home, passed without incident. In Smith’s continued absence Starbuck had offered to go to the dam to stand a night watch with Williams against a possible surprise by the right-of-way claimants; and Stillings, who had been petitioning for an injunction, came up to report progress just as Baldwin was locking his desk. “The judge has taken it under advisement, but that is as far as he would go today,” said the lawyer. “It’s simply a bold steal, of course. I’m sworn to uphold the law, and I can’t counsel armed resistance. -Just the same, I hope Williams has his nerve with him.” “He has ; and I haven’t lost mine

yet,” snapped a voice at the door; and Smith came in, dust-covered and swarthy with the grime of the wind-swept grasslands. Out of the pocket of his 1 driving coat he drew a thick packet of ' papers and slapped it upon the drawn--1 down curtain of Baldwin’s desk. "There you are,” he went on gratingly. “Now you can tell Mr. David Kinzie to go straight to blazes with his stockpinching, and the more money he puts into it, the more somebody’s going to lose!” “John!—what have you done?” demanded Baldwin. “I’ve shown ’em what it means to go up against a winner!” was the halftriumphant, half-savage exultation. “I have put a crimp in that fence-climb-ing banker of yours that will last him for one while! I’ve secured thirty-day options, at par, on enough High Line stock to swing a clear majority if Kinzie should buy up every other share there is outstanding. It Jias taken me all day, and I’ve driven a thousand miles, but the thing is done.” “But, John! If anything should happen, and we’d have to make good on those options. ... It would break the last man of us!” “We’re not going to let things happen!” was the gritting rejoinder. “I’ve I told you both a dozen times that I’m in this thing to win! You take care

of those options, Stillings; they’re worth a million dollars to somebody. Lock ’em up somewhere and then forget where they are. Now I’m going to hunt up Mr. Crawford Stanton —before I eat or sleep!” “Easy, John; hold up a minute!” the colonel broke in soothingly; and Stillings, more practical, closed the office door silently and put his back against it. “This is a pretty sudden country, but there is some sort of a limit, you know,” the big Missourian went on. “What’s your idea in going to Stanton?” “I mean to give him twelve hours In which to pack his trunk and get out of Brewster and the Timanyoni. If he hasn’t disappeared by tomorrow morning—” Stillings, was signaling in dumb show to Baldwin. Tl<‘ hnd nui<-‘ op ned the door and was crooking his finger and making signs over his shoulder toward the corridor. Baldwin saw what was wanted, and immediately shot his desk cover open and turned on the lights. “That last lot of steel and cemejit vouchers was made out yesterday, John,” he said, slipping the rubber band from a file of papers in the desk. “If you’ll take time to sit down here and run ’em over, and put yopr name on ’em, I’ll hold Martin long enough to let him get the checks in tonight’s mail. I’ll be back after a little.”

Smith dragged up the president’s big swivel chair and planted himself in it, and an instant later he was lost to everything save the columns of figures on the vouchers. Stillings had let himself out, and when the colonel followed him, the lawyer cautiously closed the door of the private office, and edged Baldwin into the corridor. “We’ve mighty near got a madman to deal with in there, colonel,” he whispeted, when the two were out of earshot. “I was watching his eyes when he said that about Stanton, and they fairly blazed. He’s going to kill somebody, if we don’t look out.” Baldwin was shaking his head .dubiously. “He’s acting like a locoed thoroughbred that’s gone outlaw,” he said. “Do you reckon he’s sure-enough crazy, Bob?” “Only in the murder nerve. This deal with the options shows that he’s all to the good on the business side. That was the smoothest trick that’s been turned In any stage of this dodging fight with the big fellows. It simply knocks Kinzie’s rat-gnawing game dead. If there were only somebody who could calm Smith down a little and bring him to reason—somebody near enough to him to dig down under his shell 'and get at the real man that used to be there when he first took hold wish us—” “A woman?” queried Baldwin, frowning disapproval in anticipation of what Stillings' might be going to suggest. “A woman for choice, of course. I was thinking of this young woman over at the Hophra House; anybody can see with half an eye that she has a pretty good grip on him. Suppose we go across the street and give her an invitation to come and do a little missionary work on Smith. She looks level-headed and sensible enough to take it the way it’s meant.” | Stillings was a lawyer and had no ' scruples, but the colonel had them in just proportion to hjs Southern birth and breeding. . “I don’t like to drag a woman into

it, any way or shape, Bob,” he protested ; and he would have gone on to say that he had good reason to believe that Miss Richlander’s influence over Smith might not be at all of the meliorating sort, but Stillings cut him short. “There need be no ‘dragging.’ The young woman doubtless knows the business situation; she evidently knows Smith a whole lot better than we do. B lt’s a chance, and we’d better try it. He's good for half an hour or so with those vouchers.” (TO BE CONTINUED.)

"I’m Going to Hunt Up Mr. Crawford Stanton.”