Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 96, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 March 1918 — 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 • note which he has O. K.’d with consent of Watrous Dunham, the bank’s president, is worthless. Thd other Is a summons from Dunham. He breaks an apKlntment with Vera Richlander, daughr 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 JH—Near Brewster, Colo., Dexter Baldwin, president of the Tlmanyonl 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 nig chunks and to making It work. The company is fighting concealed opposition ana is near ruin. Smith is jokingly suggested as a financial doctor. CHAPTER V—Williams talks business to Smith, who will tell nothing of his nest. Smith pushes a stalled auto away from an oncoming train and saves the colonel's daughter Corona. CHAPTER VT— While Corona looks on &e drives off three bogus mining right claimants from the company’s land. < CHAPTER Vll— The colonel take* Smith to his home and persuades him, in spite of Smith’s warning, to undertake (he 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 Klnzie, the local banker. CHAPTER X—ln the midst of a “mira-cle-working 3 ' campaign Corona asks Smith alarming questions. He reads that Dunham, still living, has doubled the reward for bls 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 Ms danger. He hears the Richlanders have gone up to the mines. He hires a eew stenographer, Shaw, who is a spy •f Stanton T s. CHAPTER XIH—He meets Vera, who has 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 Vera. Stanton makes some night visits and is trailed. 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—Rumors that the dam is 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—An abandoned rall■road right-of-way is claimed across the dam, and Smith prepares for actual fighting. He buys options on all offered stock and stops the panic. CHAPTER XVIII—He tells Corona he has locked up Jlbbey in an old mine until the fight is over. She calls him a coward. CHAPTER XIX—He releases Jibbey, and after that rescues him from drowning. CHAPTER XX—Smith tells Starbuck of Stanton’s probable moves to get United States court Interference. CHAPTER XXl—Vera warns him that her father has written to Klnzie about him. The colonel is loyal and calls Klnzie a straddler. CHAPTER XXll—Vera and Jibbey refuse to identify Smith, and mislead Klnzie. Stanton .breaks with Klnzie. CHAPTER XXIV. ‘"> A Strong Man Armed. Smith put his elbows on the desk &nd propped his head in his hands. It was not the attitude of dejection; It was rather a trancelike rigor of concentration, with each and all of the newly .emergent powers once more springing alive to answer the battle call. At the desk-end Starbuck sat with his hands locked over one knee, too disheartened to roll a cigarette, normal solace for all woundings less than mortal. After a minute or two Smith jerked himself around to face the news-bririger. "Does Colonel Baldwin know?” he asked. "Sure! That’s the worst of it. Didn’t I tell you? He drove out to the dam, reaching the works just ahead of the trouble. When M’Graw and the posse outfit showed up, the colonel got It into his head that the whole thing was merely another trick of Stanton’s —a fake. Ginty, the quarry boss, brought the news to town. He says there was a bloody mix-up, and at the end of it the colonel and Williams were both under arrest for resisting the officers.” Smith nodded thoughtfully. “Of course; that was Just what was needed. With Hie president and the chief of construction locked up, and the wheels blocked for the next twenty-four hours, our charter will be gone.” “This world and another, and then the fireworks,” Starbuck threw in. "With the property all roped up in a law tangle, and those stock options of yours due to fall in, it looks as if a few prominent citizens of the limanyonl would have to take to the high grass apd the tall timber. It sure does, John.” “Do you know, Billy, I have been expecting something of Jhls kind —and expecting it to be a fate. That’s whr

I sent Stillings to Red Butte; to keep watch of Judge Lorching’s court. Stillings was to phone me if Lorching issued an order.” “And he hasn’t ’phoned you?” “No; but that doesn’t prove anything. The order may have been issued, and Stillings may have tried to let us know. There are a good many ways in which a man’s mouth may be stopped—when there are no scruples on the other side.” “Then you think there is no doubt that the court order is straight, and that this man M’Graw is really a deputy marshal and has the law for what he is doing?” “In the absence .of any proof to the contrary, we are obliged to believe it —or at least to accept it. But we’re not dead yet. . . . Billy, it’s running in my mind that we’ve got to go out there and clean up Mr. M’Graw and bls crowd.” Starbuck threw up his hands and made a noise like a dry wagon wheel. “Holy smoke! — go up against the whole United States?” he gasped. Smith’s grin showed his strong, even teeth. “Starbuck, you remember what I told you one night?—the night I dragged you up to my rooms In the hotel and gave you a hint of the reason why I had no business to make love to Corona Baldwin?” “Yep.” “Well, the time has come when I may as well fill out the blanks in the story for you.” And with Billy looking straight into his eyes, he did so. At the end Starbuck was nodding soberly. “You sure have been carrying a back-load all these weeks, John, never knowing what minute was going to be the next. Now I know about this Miss Rich-pastures. She knows you and she could give you away if she wanted to. Has she done it, John?” “No; but her father has. Stanton has got hold of the end of the thread, and, while I don’t know it definitely, it is practically certain he sent a wire. If the Brewster police are not looking for me at this moment, they will be shortly. That brings us back to this High Line knockout. As the matter stands. Tm the one man in our outfit who has absolutely nothing to lose. I am an officer of the company, and no legal notice has been served upori*me. Can you fill out the remainder of the order?” “No, I’ll be switched if I can!” "Then I’ll fill it for you. So far as I know—legally, you understand —this raid has never been authorized by the courts; at least, that is what I’m going to assume until the proper papers have been served on me. Therefore I am free to strike one final blow for the colonel and his friends, and I’m going to do It, if I can dodge the police long enough to get action.” Starbuck’s tilting chair righted Itself with a crash. “You’ve thought it all out?—Just how to go at it?” “Every move; and everyone of them a straight bid for a second penitentiary sentence.” “All right,” said the mine owner briefly. “Count me in.” “For information only,” was the brusque reply. “You have a stake in the country and a good name to maintain. I have nothing. But you can tell me a few things. Are our workmen still on the ground?” “Yes. Ginty said there were only a few stragglers who came to town with him. Most of the two shifts are staying on to get their pay—or until they find out that they aren’t going to get it.” “And the colonel and Williams: the marshal is holding them out at the dam?” “Uh-huh; locked up in the office shack, Ginty says.” “Good. I shan’t need the colonel, but I shall need Williams. Now another question: you know Sheriff Harding fairly well, don't you? What sort of a man is he?” “Square as a die, and as nervy as they make ’em. When he gets a warrant to serve, he’ll bring In his man, dead or alive.” “That’s all I’ll ask of him. Now go and find me an auto, and then you can fade away and get ready to prove a good, stout alibi.” j “Yes —like fits I wllll” retorted the mine owner. “I. told you once, John, that I was in this thing to a finish, and I meant it. Go on giving your orders.” \ “Very well; you’ve had your wairning. The next thing is the auto. \ I want to catch Judge Warner before he goes to bed. I’ll telephone while you’re getting a car.” \ Starbuck had no farther to go than to the garage where he had put up his car, and when he got it and drove to the Klnzie building, Smith came out of the shadow of the entrance to mount beside him. “Drive around to the garage again and let me try another phone.” was

the low-spoken request "My wine Isn’t working.” The short run was quickly made, and Smith went to the garage office. A moment later a two-hundred-pound policeman strolled up to put d huge fooLjpn the running board of the waiting auto. Starbuck greeted him as a friend. “Hello, Mac. How’s tricks with you tonight?” “Th’ tricks are even, an’ Tm tryln’ to take th’ odd wan,” said the big Irishman. “’Tls a man named Smith I’m

lookin' for, Misther Starbuck —J. MonSmith; th’ fl-nanshal boss av th’ big ditch comp’ny. Have ye seen 'um ?” Starbuck, looking over the policeman’s shoulder, could see Smith at the telephone in the garage office. Another man might have lost his head, but the ex-cowpuncher was of the chosen few whose wits sharpen handily in an emergency. “He hangs out at the Hophra House a good part of the time in the evenings,” he replied coolly. “Hop in and I’ll drive you around.” Three minutes later the threatening danger was a danger pushed a little way into the future, and Starbuck was back at the garage curb waiting for Smith to come out. Through the window he saw Smith placing the receiver on its hook, and a moment afterward he was opening the car door for his passenger. “Did you make out to raise the Judge?” he inquired, as Smith climbed in. “Yes. He will meet me at his chambers in the courthouse as soon as he can drive down from his house.” “What are your hoping to do, John? Judge Warner is only a circuit judge; he can’t set an order of the United States court aside, can he?” “No; but there is one thing that he can do. You may remember that I had a talk with him this morning at his house. I was trying then to cover all the chances, among them the possibility that Stanton would jump in with a gang of armed thugs at the last minute. We are going to assume that this is whu. has been done.” Starbuck set the car in motion and sent it spinning out of the side street, around the plaza, and beyond to the less brilliantly illuminated residence district —which was not the shortest way to the courthouse. "You mustn’t pull Judge Warner’s leg, John,” he protested, breaking the purring silence after the business quarter had been left behind; “he’s too good a man for that.”

“I shall tell him the exact truth, so far as we know it,” was the quick reply. “There is one chance in a thousand that we shall come out of this with the law—as well as the equities—on our side. I shall tell the judge that no papers have been served on us, and, so far as I know, they haven’t. What are you driving all the way around here for?” “This is one of the times when the longest way round is the shortest way home,” Starbuck explained. “The bad news you were looking for ‘has came.’ While you were phoning in the garage I put one policeman wise—to nothing.” “He was looking for me?” “Sure thing—and by name. We’ll fool around here in the block streets until the judge has had fime to show up. Then I’ll drop you at the courthouse and go hustle the sheriff for you. You’ll want Harding, I tqke it?” “Yes. I’m taking the chance that only the city authorities have been notified In my personal affair —not the county officers. It’s a long chance, of course; I may be running my neck squarely into the noose. But it’s all risk, Billy; every move in this night’s game. Head up for the courthouse. The judge will be there by this time.” Two minutes beyond this the car was drawing up to the curb on the mesa-facing side of the courthouse square. There were two lighted windows in the second story of the otherwise darkened building, and Smith sprang to the sidewalk. “Go now and find Harding, and have him bring one trusty deputy with him: I’ll be ready by the time you get back,” he directed; but Starbuck waited until he had seen Smith safely lost in the shadows of the pillared courthouse entrance before he drove away. (TO BE CONTINUED.)

“The Tricks Are Even."