CHAPTER XXIVTOOMEY GOES INTO SOMETHING
Few in Prouty denied that there were forty-eight hours in the day that began about six o’clock on Saturday night and lasted until the same hour Monday morning. If there had been some way of taking a mild anesthetic to have carried them through this period, many no doubt would have resorted to it, for oblivion was preferable to consciousness during a Sunday in Prouty.
It could not, strictly, be called a Day of Rest, because there was not sufficient business during the week to make any one tired enough to need it.
When the church bells tinkled, the Episcopalians bowed patronizingly to the Presbyterians, the Presbyterians condescendingly recognized the Methodists, the Methodists, by a slight inclination of the head, acknowledged the existence of the Catholics. This done, the excitement of the day was over.
The footsteps of a chance pedestrian echoed in Main Street like some one walking in a tunnel. Children flattened their noses against the panes and looked out wistfully upon a world that had no joy in it.
The gloom of financial depression hung over Prouty like a crepe veil. If Prouty spent Sunday waiting for Monday, it spent the rest of the week waiting for something to happen. Prouty’s attitude was one of halfhearted expectancy—like a shipwrecked sailor knowing himself outside the line of travel, yet unable to resist watching the horizon for succor.
The Boosters Club still went on boosting, but its schemes for self-advertisement resembled a defective pin-wheel, which, after the first whiz, lacks the motive powers to turn further. The motive power in this instance was money. Prouty wanted money with the same degree of intensity that the parched Lazarus wanted water.
Real estate owners in Prouty regarded their property without enthusiasm, for there were few residences not ornamented with a “plaster” in the form of a mortgage. Abram Pantin’s boast that he never “held the sack” was heard but seldom, for there was more than a reasonable doubt that he was able to collect the interest on his farm mortgages, to say nothing of the principal.
The town was at a stage when merely to eat and go on wearing clothes was cause for self-congratulation. It was conceded that a person who could exist in Prouty could live anywhere. Its citizens seemed to partake of the nature of the cactus that, grubbed up and left for dead, always manages somehow to get its roots down again.
The ProutyGritstill called the attention of the world to the country’s natural resources, but Mr. Butefish’s editorials had a hollow ring, like the “spiel” of the sideshow barker, who talks in anticipation of a swift kick from a dissatisfied patron.
Major Prouty, who had hoped to die in his boots, picturesquely, had passed away quietly in his bed with acute indigestion from eating sour-dough sinkers of his own manufacture. It was cold the day he was buried, so not many went to the funeral, and the board which had been put up to mark his grave, until the town could afford a suitable monument, had blown over. A “freighter” had repaired his brake block with a portion of the marker, so no one except the grave digger was sure where the Major lay.
Jasper Toomey at this period of his career was engaged in the real estate business. About ninety per cent of Prouty’s residences were listed with him. In the beginning, while taking descriptions of the properties and making a confidential note of the lowest possible sums which would be accepted, he was busy and optimistic. But, this completed, business subsided suddenly. His few inquiries for properties came from buyers who had no cash available. The breath he expended in “working up deals” which came to nothing when the critical point was reached would have floated a balloon.
Toomey had no office, but conducted his affairs in winter from the chair by the radiator in the southwest corner of the Prouty House. In summer, he moved to the northeast corner of the veranda. To borrow five dollars nowadays was a distinct achievement, and his sallow face had taken on the habitual expression of a hungry wolf waiting for strays and weaklings. Mrs. Toomey still anticipated the day when “Jap would get into something.”
As much worse as was Sunday than Monday, just so much worse was winter than summer in Prouty. Winter meant more coal, warmer clothes, high-priced food, and a period of hibernating until it was over. So it was in a kind of panic that Prouty suddenly realized that fall had come and another winter would soon be upon them. Thus, in a mood of desperation, the officers of the Boosters Club sent out notice of an important meeting to its members. It was urged most earnestly that each should come prepared to offer a new suggestion for the improvement of financial conditions in Prouty. The fact that the need was thus publicly admitted evidenced the urgency of the situation.
It seemed as though every plan that human ingenuity could devise had been already discussed, and shelved forthe very excellent reason that there never was any capital with which to give the projects a try-out. While the members subscribed with glad and openhanded generosity, to collect the subscriptions was another matter.
Heretofore suggestions had come sporadically; now it was believed that as the concentrated wills of powerful minds are alleged to have moved inanimate objects, somewhat in the same fashion concerted effort on the part of the Boosters Club might result in something tangible.
The meeting was called for Monday night, and with only twenty-four hours in which to think of something for Prouty’s salvation, the heads of households taxed their brains diligently for an original idea to offer.
No such perturbation obtained in the Toomey family, however, where Mr. and Mrs. Toomey chattered in gay excitement, the like of which they had not experienced since their memorable trip to Chicago. With his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets, Toomey swaggered, resembling nothing so much as a pheasant strutting and drumming on a log for his mate’s edification, and, not unlike the female bird of sober coloring, Mrs. Toomey looked and listened with a return of much of her old-time admiration, though the cause for Toomey’s present state of exultation was, in its inception, due to her own suggestion.
“I’ll show these pinheads something,” Toomey boasted. “The day’ll come,” he levelled at his wife an impressive finger, “when they’ll nudge each either and say, 'There goes Toomey’s Dog!'”
Mrs. Toomey sighed happily, “It’s like a story!”
“Nothing comes to you unless you go after it,” Toomey declared, in the voice of a man who has succeeded and is giving the benefit of his experience to the less fortunate.
“I wish you could be there when I spring it,” he chortled.
Yet the occasion for this rare exuberance in the Toomey family was merely a few courteous lines signed “John Prentiss,” inside the businesslike blue-gray envelope resting conspicuously on top of the clock on the mantelpiece. They had read and re-read it, extracting from it the last ounce of encouragement possible.
Mrs. Toomey had come across John Prentiss’s card in a drawer she was cleaning and the thought had come to her that therein lay a possibility which never had been tested. After all these years it might not be possible to reach him, and when he was found it might not be possible to derive any benefit from the scant acquaintance, but it was worth trying, and if there was a way, Jap would find it, so she had shown him the card and he had joined her in marveling at their negligence.
After due reflection, Toomey had written to Prentiss recalling the circumstances of their meeting and the fact that he had evidenced an interest in their country, and renewing his invitation for a visit. He went at some length into the details of the defunct irrigation project at Prouty, which if properly completed and managed was a sure and big winner. He had options on stock which gave him the controlling interest, he stated, and had little doubt that the remainder could be acquired easily. He urged Prentiss to come at his earliest convenience and look it over.
Toomey sent the letter to the hotel in Chicago which Prentiss had given as one of his permanent addresses and it was duly forwarded. After the lapse of a reasonable time, the answer had come from Denver. It had contained proper expressions of appreciation for the invitation, a wish to be remembered cordially to Mrs. Toomey,and concluded with the statement that his desire to see that section of the country had in no wise abated and, if possible, he would do so in the early winter, at which time he would be glad to look into the merits of the irrigation project.
Noncommittal, but friendly, the letter sent the blood racing through Toomey’s veins like a stiff drink of brandy. It stimulated his imagination like strong coffee and evoked the roseate dreams of hasheesh. Even Mrs. Toomey, cautious and conservative as she was by nature and through many disappointments, could not resist the contagion of her husband’s enthusiasm.
To say that Toomey looked forward with eagerness to this meeting of the Boosters Club is to express it inadequately. He counted the hours when he should be reinstated in the position which he had occupied when he first came to Prouty. Unexpressed, but none the less present, was a desire to show his teeth at those who had humiliated him by lending him money.
The Boosters Club now occupied a storeroom which it had rent free until such time as its owner should acquire a tenant. This privilege had been granted some three years previous, and there seemed no imminent danger of the club being obliged to vacate.
Behind a fly-specked window an equally fly-specked sheaf of wheat from North Dakota, and an ear of corn of gargantuan proportions from Kansas, proclaimed the Club’s belief that similar results might be obtained from the local soil—when it had water. There was a sugar beet of amazing circumference that had been raised in an adjacent county, and a bottle of sand that the Club was certain contained a rare mineral, if it were possible to get an honest assay on it. They exhibited also a can of pulverized gypsum, of which there was a sufficient quantityin sight in the vicinity to polish the brass trimmings of the world’s navies, if a “live wire” could be induced to take hold of its development. A miniature monument of rock faintly stained with copper rose in the center of the window, and a buffalo skull lent a note of historic interest.
The walls inside were decorated with the Club’s slogan, “Boost for Prouty.” The undertaker’s chairs were still doing duty, since there was so much truth in that person’s plaintive wail that “the climate was so damned healthy that nobody ever died,” there was seldom other use for them.
There was a pine table upon a raised platform, behind which Hiram Butefish remained, as before, the Club’s honored President.
In the corner was a stove which had been donated by the Methodist minister, because, presumably, of a refractory grate which it was found impossible to operate without profanity.
Into these comfortable and spacious quarters, a goodly number of Prouty’s representative citizens came singly and in squads upon the occasion of this important meeting.
Each member had kept his own solution of Prouty’s problem closely guarded, so no man knew what his neighbor had to offer until that one’s turn came to divulge it. In truth, it had been a long time since a meeting of such piquancy and interest had been called.
After some little preliminary business, Hiram Butefish, with a candor which never before had distinguished his public utterances upon this subject, declared flatly that Prouty was in a precarious, not to say desperate, condition. The county treasury was empty, the town treasury was empty, and the warrants of either had little more value than the stock certificates of an abandoned gold mine. What were they going to do about it? Should they sitquietly and starve like a lost tribe wandering in the desert? Did they wish to see their wives naked and their children hungry? No! Mr. Butefish smote the table until the crack in the water pitcher lengthened. Then by all that was Great and Good, somebody had to think of something!
Mr. Butefish had only said what everybody knew, but his manner of saying it sent a chill over every one present.
“Doc” Fussel, whose sales during the day had been a package of rat poison and a bottle of painkiller, looked like a lemon that has lain too long in the window, when he arose and diffidently offered his suggestion for the relief of Prouty. The doctor’s voice when he was frightened had the rich sonorous tones of a mouse squeaking in the wall, and now as he ventured the suggestion that Prouty’s hope lay in raising peppermint, his voice was inaudible beyond the fifth row of chairs. In the rear of the room they caught the words “mint” and “still,” and were under the impression that he was advocating the manufacture of counterfeit money and moonshine whiskey. As a matter of fact, the doctor advised the purchase of large tracts of land which could be flooded and transformed into bogs. These bogs were to be planted in peppermint, for which, he averred, there was an insatiable demand. The world had yet to have too much peppermint. So long as there were babies there would be colic, and so long as there was colic there would be a need for peppermint; therefore, reasoning along the dotted line from A to Z, there always would be a market. Peppermint was the one industry requiring small capital which had not been overdone. He could go to Illinois and purchase a secondhand still of which he knew, at small cost. A bottling works for preparing and labeling the essence could be established in Prouty, and there was no reason why, in time, Proutyshould not become the recognized peppermint center of America.
When the doctor sat down, after giving the back of the chair which he gripped a farewell wring that all but tore it loose from its sockets, Mr. Butefish arose and congratulated him upon the novelty of his suggestion and recommended that it be investigated carefully.
There was excellent reason to believe that Walter Scales, at no remote date, had been handling kerosene and saltfish, for the air in his vicinity was redolent of these commodities as he arose when called upon as the next in order.
Before speaking of the remedy for the present stagnant condition of “the fairest spot that the sun ever shone upon,” Mr. Scales stated that he wished to protest thus publicly against the practice which now obtained of pitching horseshoes in the main street of Prouty. There was nothing, he declared vehemently, which made so bad an impression upon a stranger as to see the leading citizens of a community pitching horseshoes in its principal thoroughfare.
Passing on to the purpose for which he had risen, Mr. Scales averred that it was probable that he would be considered an impractical visionary when he made known his proposition; nevertheless, it had been long in his mind and no harm would come from voicing it. To his notion, the thing most needed to revitalize Prouty was an electric car-line. This line should start at the far end of town, somewhere down by the Double Cross Livery Stable, possibly, and end at an artificial lake and amusement park a few miles out in the country—he waved his arm vaguely. A street car whizzing through Prouty would put new life in it, and so hungry were its inhabitants for entertainmentthat he had no doubt whatever that the amusement park would make ample returns upon the investment.
Mr. Butefish made a note of Mr. Scales’s vision, but very much questioned as to whether Prouty was ripe for a street railway, since—he admitted reluctantly—such a project might be a little ahead of the immediate requirements.
Other suggestions followed—among them, the possibility of opening up an outcropping of marble in a canyon sixteen miles from Prouty. The marble, though badly streaked with yellow, would, it was opined, serve excellently for tombstones. Also, there was a clay peculiar to a certain gulch in the vicinity which was believed by the discoverer to contain the necessary qualities for successful brick-making.
Then “Gov'nor” Sudds arose in a flattering silence to give the Club the benefit of his cogitations. Something large always could be expected of the “Gov'nor.” Although he lived in three figures, he thought in seven, and not one of the Gov'nor’s many projects had been capitalized at less than a million.
Conrad has said that listening to a Russian socialist is much like listening to a highly accomplished parrot—one never can rid himself of the suspicion that he knows what he is talking about. The same, at times, applied to the Gov'nor. He said nothing so convincingly that always it was received with the closest attention.
Now, as Sudds stood up, large, grave and impressive, he looked like a Roman Senator about to address a gathering in the Forum. No one present could dream from his manner that he had that day received a shock, the violence of which could best be likened to a well-planted blow in the pit of the stomach. As a hardy perennial candidate for political office, he had become inured to disappointment,but the present shock had been of such an unexpected nature that for hours Mr. Sudds had been in a state little short of groggy. The maiden aunt of seventy, upon whose liberal remembrance he had built his hopes as the Faithful hug to themselves the promise of heaven, had married a street car conductor and wired for congratulations. He had pulled himself together and staggered to the meeting where, though still with the sinking sensation of a man who has inadvertently stepped through the plastering of the ceiling, he was able to dissemble successfully.
Clearing his throat, the Gov'nor fixed his eyes upon “Hod” Deefendorf, owner of the Double Cross Livery Stable, and demanded:
“Among all the voices of Nature is there a more pleasing or varied sound than that of falling water?”
He paused as though he expected an answer, so “Hod” squirmed and ventured weakly that he “guessed there wasn’t.”
The Gov'nor continued: “The gentle murmur of the brook, the noisy rumble of rapids, the thundering roar of mighty cataracts—can you beat it?” In a country where the school children giggled at sight of an umbrella, the question seemed irrelevant, so this time no one replied.
“Consider the rivulet as it glints and glistens in ceaseless change, the fairy mists of shimmering cascades, the majestic sweep of waterfalls—has Nature any force more potent for the use of man than falling water? No! None whatever! And I propose that we yoke these racing tumbling forces back there in yon mountains and make them work for us!”
The members exchanged glances—the Gov'nor was living up to their expectations of him.
“That accomplished, I propose,” the Governor declared dramatically, “to take nitrogen from the air and sell it to the government!”
He looked triumphantly into the intent upturned faces into which had crept a look of blankness. There were those who thought vaguely that nitrogen was the scientific name for mosquito, while others confused it with nitre, an excellent emergency remedy for horses.
“They’ve done it in Germany,” he continued, “and used it in the manufacture of high explosives. Is there any gentleman present who will tell me that what’s been done in Germany, can’t be done in Wyoming?”
The applause was tumultuous when he had further elucidated and finished. To get something out of nothing made a strong appeal to Prouty. It was criminal for Sudds to waste his abilities in a small community. They wondered why he did it.
Hiram Butefish, who succeeded the orator, felt a quite natural diffidence in giving to the Club his modest suggestion, but as he talked he warmed to his subject.
“I am convinced,” declared Mr. Butefish, “that the future of Prouty lies in fossils.”
“Human?” a voice inquired ironically.
“Clams,” replied Mr. Butefish with dignity. “Also fish and periwinkles. Locked in Nature’s boozem over there in the Bad Lands there’s a world of them. I kicked ’em up last year when I was huntin’ horses, and realized their value. They’d go off like hot cakes to high schools and collectors. We could get a professor in here cheap—a lunger, maybe—to classify ’em, and then we’d send out our own salesman. We can advertise and create a market.
“Gentlemen,” solemnly, “we have not one iota of reason to be discouraged! With thousands of acresavailable for peppermint; with more air to the square inch than any place else in the world, with an inexhaustible bed of fossils under our very noses, all we need to fulfill the dreams of our city’s founder is unity of effort and capital. In other words—MONEY!”
“And the longer you stay in Prouty the more you’ll need it!”
The jeering voice from the rear of the room belonged to Toomey.
The Club turned its head and looked at the interrupter in astonishment. He was sitting in the high-headed arrogance with which once upon a time they had all been familiar. Though momentarily disconcerted, Mr. Butefish collected himself and retorted:
“Perhaps you have something better to offer, Toomey.”
“If I hadn’t I wouldn’t offer it,” he replied insolently.
The thought that came instantly to every mind was that Toomey must have had a windfall. How else account for this sudden independence? This possibility tempered the asperity of Mr. Butefish’s answer, though it still had plenty of spirit:
“We are ready to acknowledge your—er—originality, Mr. Toomey, and will be delighted to listen.”
To Toomey it was a rare moment. He enjoyed it so keenly that he wished he might prolong it. Uncoiling his long legs, he surveyed his auditors with a tolerant air of amusement:
“I presume there are no objections to my mentioning a few of the flaws that I see in the schemes which have been outlined?”
“Our time is limited,” hinted Mr. Butefish.
“It won’t take long to puncture those bubbles,” Toomey answered, contemptuously.
Certainly he had made a raise somewhere!
“We will hear your criticisms,” replied Mr. Butefish, with the restraint of offended dignity.
“In the first place, everybody knows that the soil in this country sours and alkalies when water stands on it.” Toomey spoke as a man who had wide experience. He looked at “Doc” Fussel, who shrivelled with the chagrin that filled him, when Toomey added, “That settles the peppermint bog, doesn’t it?
“Take the next proposition: What’s the use of car-lines that begin nowhere and end nowhere? A cripple could walk from one end of the town to the other in seven minutes. You couldn’t raise enough outside capital to buy the spikes for it.
“Take fossils—a school boy would know that the demand for fossils is limited, and who is sure that the bed is inexhaustible until it’s tested. When the government is taking nitrates out of the air in Prouty to make ammunition, you and I will be under the daisies, Governor.”
If looks could kill, Toomey would have died standing. But he continued emphatically:
“The salvation of Prouty is water. By water I mean the completion of the irrigation project. Gentlemen—I am here to state unreservedly that I can put that enterprise through, providing the stockholders will give me an option upon fifty-one per cent. of the stock. I must have the controlling interest.”
Could he have an option?Couldhe! Only the restraining hand of a neighbor upon his coat tail prevented Walt Scales from hurdling the intervening chairs to reach Toomey to thrust his shares upon him. Hope and skepticism of the genuineness of his assertions commingled in the faces upon which Toomey looked, while he waitedfor an answer. He saw the doubt and took Prentiss’s letter from his pocket. Shaking it at them, he declared impressively:
“This communication is from a party I have interested—an old friend of mine of wealth and standing, who will finance the project providing it is as represented, and under the condition I have just mentioned.” Toomey himself so thoroughly believed what he said that he carried conviction, although nowadays his veracity under oath would have been questioned.
The prospect of unloading his stock made Hiram Butefish as thirsty as if he had eaten herring, and, overlooking the glass in his excitement, he drank long and deep from the water pitcher before he said tremulously:
“Undoubtedly that can be arranged, Mr. Toomey.”
It was obvious that the Boosters Club shared its president’s opinion. Each quivered with an eagerness to get at Toomey which was not unlike that of a race horse fretting to be first over the starting line. They crowded around him when the meeting was ended, offering their congratulations and their stock to him, but taking care to avoid any mention of the various sums that he owed each and all.
As for Toomey, it was like the old days when his appearance upon the streets of Prouty was an event, when they called him “Mister” and touched their hat-brims to him, when he could get a hearing without blocking the exit.
He left the Boosters Club with his pulses bounding with pride and importance. He had “come back”—as a man must who has imagination and initiative. They could “watch his smoke,” could Prouty.
There was not a member present who did not reach his home panting, to shake his wife out of her slumbers to tell her that, at last, Toomey had “got into something.”
CHAPTER XXVTHE CHINOOK
Emblazoned on the front page of the Omaha paper upon which Mr. Pantin relied to keep him abreast of the times was the announcement that both mutton and wool had touched highwater mark in the history of the sheep-raising industry.
Mr. Pantin moved into the bow window where the light was better and read the article carefully. The Australian embargo, dust-storms in the steppes of Russia, rumors of war, all had contributed to send prices soaring. When he had concluded, he took the stub of a pencil from his waistcoat pocket and made a computation in neat figures upon the margin. As he eyed the total his mouth puckered in a whistle which changed gradually to a grin of satisfaction.
“You can’t keep a squirrel down in a timbered country,” Mr. Pantin chuckled aloud, ambiguously.
A pleased smile still rested upon his face when Mrs. Pantin entered.
“Priscilla, will you do me a favor?”
“Abram,” reproachfully, “have I ever failed you? What is it?”
“The next time you have something going on here I want you to invite Kate Prentice.”
Mrs. Pantin recoiled.
“What!”
“Don’t squawk like that!” said Mr. Pantin, irritably.“You do it often, and it’s an annoying mannerism.”
“Do you quite realize what you are asking?” his wife demanded.
“Perfectly,” replied Mr. Pantin, calmly. “I’ve passed the stage when I talk to make conversation.”
“But think how she’s been criticised!”
Mr. Pantin got up impatiently.
“Oh, you virtuous dames—”
Mrs. Pantin’s thin lips went shut like a rat-trap.
“Abram, are you twitting me?”
Mr. Pantin ignored the accusation, and observed astutely:
“I presume you’ve done your share of talking, and that’s why—”
“She is impossible, and what you ask is impossible,” Mrs. Pantin declared firmly.
“It’s not often that I ask a favor of you, Prissy.” His tone was conciliatory.
Mrs. Pantin met him half way and her voice was softer as she answered:
“I appreciate that, Abram, but there are a few of us who must keep up the bars against such persons. Society—”
“Rats!” ejaculated Mr. Pantin coarsely.
The hand which she had laid tenderly upon his shoulder was withdrawn as if it harbored a hornet.
“I don’t understand this at all—not at all,” she said, icily. “However,” very distinctly, “it is not necessary that I should, for I shall not do it.” She folded her arms as she confronted him.
Mr. Pantin was silent so long that she thought the battle was over, and purred at him:
“You can realize how I feel about it, can’t you, darling?”
“No, by George, I can’t! And I’m not going to either.” He slapped the table with Henry Van Dyke in ooze leather for emphasis. “I want Kate Prentice invited here the next time she’s in town. If you don’t do as I ask, Priscilla, you shan’t go a step—not a step—to Keokuk this winter.”
“Is that an ultimatum?” Mrs. Pantin demanded.
Mr. Pantin gave a quick furtive look over either shoulder, then declared with emphatic gusto:
“I mean every damn word of it!”
Mrs. Pantin stood speechless, thinking rapidly. There was nothing for it evidently but to play her trump card, which never yet had failed her. She wasted no breath in further argument, but threw herself full-length on the davenport and had hysterics.
Only a few times in their married life had Mr. Pantin risen on his hind legs, speaking figuratively, and defied her. In the beginning, before he was well housebroken, he was careless in the matter of cleaning his soles on the scraper, and had been obstinate on the question of changing his shirt on Wednesdays, holding that once a week was enough for a person not engaged in manual labor. Mrs. Pantin had won out on each issue, but it had not been an easy victory. Mr. Pantin had been docile so long now that she had expected no further trouble with him, therefore this outbreak was so unlooked for that her fit was almost genuine.
Having hurled his thunderbolt, Mr. Pantin stood above his wife regarding her imperturbably as she lay with her face buried in a sofa pillow. Unmoved, he even felt a certain interest in the rise and fall of her shoulder blades as she sobbed. Actually, she seemed to breathe with them—“like the gills of a fish,” he thought heartlessly—and wondered how long she could keep it up.
“It’s no use having this tantrum, Prissy,” he said inexorably.
Tantrum! The final insult. Mrs. Pantin squealed with rage and gnawed the corner of the leather pillow.
“You might as well come out of it,” he admonished further. “You’ll only make your eyes red and give yourself a headache.”
“You’re a brute, Abram Pantin, and I wish I’d never seen you!”
Mr. Pantin suppressed the reply that the wish was mutual. Instead, he picked up the leather button which flew on the floor when Mrs. Pantin doubled her fist and smote the davenport.
“I doubt very much if she’d come, even if you ask her,” said Pantin. It was a stroke of genius.
“Not come!” The eye which Mrs. Pantin exposed regarded Mr. Pantin scornfully. “Not come? Why, she’d be tickled to pieces.”
But of that Mr. Pantin continued to have his own opinion.
Mrs. Pantin sat up and winked rapidly in her indignation.
“She’s made if I take her up, and the woman isn’t so stupid as not to know it, is she?”
“She may not see it from that angle,” dryly. “At any rate, you’ll be pleasing me greatly by asking her.”
Mrs. Pantin looked at her husband fixedly:
“Why this deep interest, Abram?”
Flattered by the implied accusation, Mr. Pantin, however, resisted the temptation to make Mrs. Pantin jealous, and answered truthfully:
“I admire her greatly. She deserves recognition and will get it. If you are a wise woman you’ll swallow your prejudices and be the first to admit it.”
Mrs. Pantin raised both eyebrows—her own and the one she put on mornings—incredulously.
“She’s the kind that would win out anywhere,” he added, with conviction.
Mrs. Pantin stared at him absently, while the tears on her lashes dried to smudges. She murmured finally:
“I could have pineapple with mayonnaise dressing.”
To conceal a smile, Mr. Pantin stooped for his paper.
“Or would you have lettuce with roquefort cheese dressing, Abram?”
“You know much more about such things than I do—your luncheons are always perfect, Prissy. Who do you think of inviting to meet her?”
Mrs. Pantin considered. Then her eyes sparkled with malice, “I’ll begin with Mrs. Toomey.”
In the office of theGrit, Hiram Butefish was reading the proof of his editorial that pointed out the many advantages Prouty enjoyed over its rival in the next county.
There was no more perfect spot on the footstool for the rearing of children, Mr. Butefish declared editorially. Fresh air, pure water, and a moral atmosphere—wherein it differed, he hinted, from its neighbor. There Vice rampant and innocent Youth met on every corner, while the curse of the Demon Rum was destroying its manhood.
Mr. Butefish laid down the proof-sheet, sighed deeply, and quite unconsciously moistened his lips.
He was for Reform, certainly, but the thought would intrude that when Vice moved on to greener fields it took with it much of the zest of living. In the days when a man could get drunk as he liked and as often as he liked without fear of criticism, sure of being laid away tenderly by tolerant friends, instead of, as now,—being snaked, scuffling, to the calaboose by the constable—
The arrival of the mail with its exchanges interrupted thoughts flowing in a dangerous channel.
The soaring price of wool, featured in the headlines, caught his attention instantly, since, naturally, anything that pertained to the sheep industry was of interest to the community. Mr. Butefish used his scissors freely and opined that the next issue of theGritwould be a corker. Then an idea came to him. Why not make it a sheep number exclusively? Give all the wool-growers in the vicinity a write-up. Great! He’d do it. Mr. Butefish enumerated them on his fingers. When he came to Kate Prentice, he hesitated. Would Prouty stand for it—the eulogy he contemplated? In a small paper one had to consider local prejudices—besides, she was not a subscriber.
While Mr. Butefish debated, a spirit of rebellion rose within him. Ever since he had established the paper he had been a worm, and what had it got him? It had got him in debt to the point of bankruptcy—that’s what it had got him—and he was good and sick of it! He was tired of grovelling—nauseated with catering to a public that paid in rutabagas and elk meat that was “spoilin’ on ’em.” He hadn’t started in right—that was half the trouble. If he had dug into their pasts and blackmailed ’em, they’d be eating out of his hand, instead of pounding on the desk in front of him if he transposed their initials. He would have been a power in the country in place of having to drag his hat brim to ’em, lest they take out their advertisement of a setting of eggs or a Plymouth Rock rooster.
He’d show ’em, by gorry! He’d show ’em! Mr. Butefish jabbed his pen into the potato he used as a penwiper, instead of the ink, in his fury. He wrote with the rapidity of inspiration, and words came which he had notknown were in his vocabulary as he extolled Kate and her achievements. Emotion welled within him until his collar choked him, so he removed it, while the pen spread with the force he put into the actual writing. And when he had finished, he walked the floor reading the editorial, his voice vibrating, tingling with his own eloquence. The article snorted defiance. Mr. Butefish tacitly waved the bright flag of personal freedom in the face of Public Opinion. He bellowed his liberty, as it were, over Kate’s shoulder. He strode, he swaggered—he had not known such a glorious feeling of independence since he left off plumbing. And he could go back to it if he had to! Mr. Butefish stopped in the middle of the floor and showed his teeth at an invisible audience of advertisers and subscribers.
The article came out exactly as written. Reflection did not temper Mr. Butefish’s attitude with caution. The bruised worm not only had turned, but rolled clean over.
The following week, Kate rode into Prouty in ignorance of the flattering tribute which the editor had paid her. Coming at a leisurely gait down Main Street she looked as usual in pitiless scrutiny at the signs which told of the collapse of the town’s prosperity. She saw without compassion the graying hair, the tired eyes of anxiety, the lines of brooding and despondency deepening in faces she remembered as carefree and hopeful, the look of resignation that comes to the weaklings who have lost their grip, the emptiness of burned-out passion, the weary languor of repeated failure—she saw it all through the eyes of her relentless hatred.
But to-day there was a something different which, in her extreme sensitiveness, she was quick to see and feel. There was a new expression in the eyes of the passersbywith whom she exchanged glances. Eyes which for years had stared at her with impudence, indifference, or ostentatious blankness now held a sort of friendly inquiry, something conciliatory, which told her they would have spoken had they not been met by the immobile mask of imperturbability that she wore in Prouty.
“Why the chinook?” Kate asked herself ironically.
The warm wave met her everywhere and she continued to wonder, though it did not melt the ice about her heart that was of many years' accumulation.
Kate had sold her wool, finally, through a commission house, and at an advance over the price at which she had held it when Bowers had advised her to accept the buyer’s offer. She expected the draft in the three weeks’ accumulation of mail for which she had come to Prouty. When the mail was handed out to her, she looked in astonishment at the amount of it. At first glance, there appeared to be only a little less than a bushel. The postmaster, who had forgotten Bowers’s instructions, grinned knowingly as he passed out photographs and sweet-scented, pink-tinted envelopes addressed to the sheepherder in feminine writing.
“So he had done it!” Kate mused as she crowded them all into the leather mail sack which bulged to the point of refusing to buckle. The letter she expected was among the rest, and, as she looked at the draft it contained, a smile that had meant not only gratification but exultation lurked at the corners of her mouth. She led her horse to the bank and tied it. Mr. Wentz came nimbly forward to the receiving teller’s window as she entered, and flashed his eloquent eyes at her.
“You’re quite a stranger!” he greeted her tritely, and added, “But we’ve been reading about you.”
Kate looked her surprise.
“In theGrit—haven’t you seen it? A great boost! Butefish really writes vurry, vurry well when he puts his mind to it.”
This explained the warmer temperature, she thought sardonically, but said merely:
“I haven’t seen the paper.” Then changing the subject: “I’ve decided to increase the size of my account with you, Mr. Wentz. I’ll leave this draft on open deposit, though it may be considerable time before I need it.” She passed it to him carelessly.
Since leaving the laundry, where he had been as temperamental as he liked, and taken it out on the wringer, Mr. Wentz had endeavored to train himself to conceal his feelings, and imagined he had succeeded. But now the wild impulse he felt to crawl through the aperture and embrace Kate told him otherwise.
Kate watched the play of emotions over his face in deep satisfaction. There was no need of words to express his gratitude—which was mostly relief.
“I appreciate this, Miss Prentice, I do indeed. I am glad that you do not hold it against us because upon a time we were not able to accommodate you.”
“A bank must abide by its rules, I presume,” she replied noncommittally.
“Exactly! A bank must protect its customers at all hazards.”
“And the directors.”
Mr. Wentz colored. Did she mean anything in particular? He wondered. He continued to speculate after her departure. It was a random shot, he decided. If it had been otherwise she scarcely would be giving him her business now, especially to the extent of this deposit—which he was needing—well, nobody but Mr. Wentz knew exactly how much.
There was a quizzical smile upon Kate’s face as she passed down the steps of the bank and turned up the street on another errand. She was walking with her eyes bent upon the sidewalk, thinking hard, when her way was blocked by Mrs. Abram Pantin extending a high supine hand with the charming cordiality which distinguished her best social manner. Mrs. Pantin slipped her manner on and off, as the occasion warranted, as she did her kitchen apron.
The suddenness of the meeting surprised Kate into a look of astonishment.
“This is Miss Prentice, isn’t it?”
“That’s the general impression,” Kate answered.
Mrs. Pantin registered vivacity by winking rapidly and twittering in a pert birdlike fashion:
“I’ve so much wanted to know you!”
The reply that there always had been ample opportunity seemed superfluous, so Kate said nothing.
“I’ve been reading about you, you know, and I want to tell you how proud we all are of you and of what you have accomplished. This is Woman’s Day, isn’t it?”
Since she seemed not to expect an answer, Kate made none and Mrs. Pantin continued:
“I’ve been wanting to see you that I might ask you to come to me—say next Thursday?”
Mrs. Pantin’s manner was tinged with patronage.
Kate’s silence deceived her. She imagined that Kate was awed and tongue-tied in her presence. The woman was, as Prissy had assured Abram, “tickled to pieces.”
In the meanwhile, interested observers of the meeting were saying to each other cynically:
“Nothing succeeds like success, does it?”
This time, apparently, Mrs. Pantin expected an answer, so Kate asked bluntly:
“What for?”
“Luncheon. At one—we are very old-fashioned. I want you to meet some of our best ladies—Mrs. Sudds—Mrs. Neifkins—Mrs. Toomey—and others.”
As she enumerated the guests on her fingers the tip of Mrs. Pantin’s pink tongue darted in and out with the rapierlike movement of an ant-eater.
Kate’s face hardened and she replied curtly:
“I already have had that doubtful pleasure upon an occasion, which you should remember.”
Mrs. Pantin flushed. Disconcerted for a moment, she collected herself, and instead of protesting ignorance of her meaning, as she was tempted, she said candidly:
“We must let bygones be bygones, Miss Prentice, and be friends. We are older now, and wiser, aren’t we?”
Kate clasped her hands behind her, a mannerism with which offending herders were familiar, and regarded Mrs. Pantin steadily.
“Older but not wiser, apparently, else you would have known better than to suggest the possibility of friendship between us. You are a poor judge of human nature, and conceited past my understanding, to imagine that it is a matter which is entirely optional with you.” With the slow one-sided smile of irony which her face sometimes wore, she bowed slightly. Then, “You will excuse me?” and passed on.