Part 12

While Major Covington and Judge Priest and the foremost of the others got in one another's way and packed in a solid, heaving mass behind the pair, all shouting and all trying to help, but really not helping at all, the red ruffian, grunting with the fervor of the blow, drove his clenched fist into old Harper's face, ripping the skin on the high Indian cheekbone. The old man dealt no blows in return, but his right hand found a grip in the folds of flesh at the tramp's throat and the fingers closed down like iron clamps on his wind.

There is no telling how long a man of Harper's age and past habits might have maintained the crushing strength of that hold, even though rage had given him the vigor of bygone youth; but the red-stubbled man, gurgling and wriggling to be free, began to die of suffocation before the grip weakened. To save himself he let go of the gunbutt, and the gun fell and bounced out of sight under a seat. Bearing down with both hands and all his might and weight upon Harper's right wrist, he tore the other's clasp off his throat and staggered back, drawing the breath with sobbing sounds back into his bursting lungs. He would have got away then if he could, and he turned as though to flee the length of the car and escape by the rear door.

The way was barred, by whooping, panting old men, hornet-hot. Everybody took a hand or tried to. The color-bearer shoved the staff of the flag between his legs and half tripped him, and as he regained his feet Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, jumping on a seat to get at him over the bobbing heads of his comrades, dealt him a glancing, clumsy blow on the shoulder with the muzzle of his old musket. Major Covington and Judge Priest were still right on him, bearing their not inconsiderable bulk down upon his shoulders.

He could have fought a path through these hampering forces. Wrestling and striking out, he half shoved, half threw them aside; but there was no evading the gaunt old man who bore down on him from the other direction. The look on the face of the old warlock daunted him. He yelled just once, a wordless howl of fear and desperation, and the yell was smothered back into his throat as Harper coiled down on him like a python, fettering with his long arms the shorter, thicker arms of the thief, crushing his ribs in, smothering him, killing him with a frightful tightening pressure. Locked fast in Harper's embrace, he went down on his back underneath; and now--all this taking place much faster than it has taken me to write it or you to read it--the old man reared himself up. He put his booted foot squarely on the contorted face of the yeggman and twisted the heel brutally, like a man crushing a worm, and mashed the thief's face to pulp. Then he seized him by the collar of his shirt, dragged him like so much carrion back the length of the car, the others making a way for him, and, with a last mighty heave, tossed him off the rear platform and stood watching him as he flopped and rolled slackly down the steep grade of the right-of-way to the gully at the bottom.

All this young Jeff and Uncle Zach witnessed, and at the last they began cheering. As they cheered there was a whistle of the air and the cars began to move--slowly at first, with hard jerks on the couplings; and then smoother and faster as the wheels took hold on the rails', and the track-joints began to click-clack in regular rhythm. And, as the train slid away, those forward who mustered up the hardihood to peer out of the windows saw one man--a red-haired, half-bald one--wriggling feebly at the foot of the cut, and another one struggling to his feet uncertainly, meanwhile holding his hands to his stunned head; and, still farther along, a third, who fled nimbly up the bank and into the undergrowth beyond, without a backward glance. Seemingly, all told, there had been only three men concerned in the abortive holdup.

Throughout its short length the train sizzled with excitement and rang with the cries of some to go on and of others to go back and make prisoners of the two crippled yeggs; but the conductor, like a wise conductor, signaled the engineer to make all speed ahead, being glad enough to have saved his train and his passengers whole. On his way through to take an inventory of possible damage and to ascertain the cause of things, he was delayed in the day-coach by the necessity of calming a hysterical country woman, so he missed the best part of what was beginning to start in the decorated rear coach.

There Mrs. McLaurin and tall Miss Lyon were emerging from their fainting fits, and little Rita Covington, now that the danger was over and past, wept in a protecting crook of her father's arm. Judge Priest's Jeff was salvaging a big revolver, with one chamber fired, from under a seat. Eight or nine old men were surrounding old Press Harper, all talking at once, and all striving to pat him on the bade with clumsy, caressing slaps. And out on the rear platform, side by side, stood Sergeant Jimmy Bagby and Corporal Jake Smedley; the corporal was wildly waving his silk flag, now unfurled to show the blue St. Andrew's cross, white-starred on a red background, waving it first up and down and then back and forth with all the strength of his arms, until the silk square popped and whistled in the air of the rushing train; the sergeant was going through the motions of loading and aiming and firing his ancient rusted musket. And at each imaginary discharge both of them, in a cracked duet, cheered for Jefferson Davis and the Southern Confederacy!

Just about then the locomotive started whistling for the Junction; outlying sheds and shanties, a section house and a water-tank or so began to flitter by. At the first blast of the whistle all the lingering fire of battle and victory faded out of Harper's face and he sat down heavily in a seat, fumbling at the inner breast pocket of his coat. There was a bloody smear high up on his cheek and blood dripped from the ball of his split thumb.

“Boys, there's some fight left in us yet,” exulted Captain Shelby Woodward, “and nobody knows it better than those two scoundrels back yonder! We all took a hand--we all did what we could; but it was you, Press--it was you that licked 'em both--single-handed! Boys,” he roared, glancing about him, “won't this make a story for the reunion--and won't everybody there be making a fuss over old Press!” He stopped then--remembering.

“I don't go through with you,” said old Press, steadily enough. “I git off here. You fellers are goin' on through--but I git off here to wait for the other train.”

“You don't do no such of a thing!” broke in Judge Priest, his voice whanging like a bowstring. “Press Harper, you don't do no such of a thing. You give me them papers!” he demanded almost roughly. “You're goin' right on through to the reunion with the rest of us--that's where you're goin'. You set right where you are in this car, and let little Rita Covington wipe that there blood off your face and tie up that thumb of yours. Why, Press, we jest naturally couldn't get along without you at the reunion. Some of us are liable to celebrate a little too much and maybe git a mite overtaken, and we'll be needin' you to take care of us.

“You see, boys,” the old judge went on, with a hitch in his voice, addressing than generally, “Press here is under a pledge to me not to touch another drop of licker till he begins servin' the sentence I imposed on him; and, boys, that means Press is goin'' to be a temperance man for the balance of his days--if I know anything about the pardonin' power and the feelin's of the governor of this state!”

So, as the accommodation ran in to the Junction, where crowds were packed on the platform and pretty girls, dressed in white, with touches of red at throat and belt, waved handkerchiefs, and gimpy-legged old men in gray uniforms hobbled stiffly back and forth, and the local band blared out its own peculiar interpretation of My Old Kentucky Home, the tall old man with the gashed cheek sat in his seat, his face transfigured with a great light of joy and his throat muscles clicking with the sobs he was choking down, while little Rita Covington's fingers dabbed caressingly at his wound with a handkerchief dipped in ice water and a dozen old veterans jostled one another to shake his hand. And they hit him on the back with comradely blows--and maybe they did a little crying themselves. But Sergeant Jimmy Bagby and Corporal Jacob Smedley took no part in this. Out on the rear platform they still stood, side by side, waving the flag and firing the unfirable musket harder and faster than ever; and, as one waved and the other loaded and fired, they cheered together:

“'Rah for Jefferson Davis, the Southern Confederacy--and Pressley G. Harper!”

VII. STRATAGEM AND SPOILS

AS THE Daily Evening News, with pardonable enthusiasm, pointed out at the time, three events of practically national importance took place in town all in that one week. On Tuesday night at 9:37 there was a total eclipse of the moon, not generally visible throughout the United States; on Wednesday morning the Tri-State Steam and Hand Laundrymen's Association began a two-days annual convention at St. Clair Hall; and on Saturday at high noon Eastern capital, in the person of J. Hayden Witherbee, arrived.

And the greatest of these was Witherbee. The eclipse of the moon took place on its appointed schedule and was witnessed through opera glasses and triangular fragments of windowpane that had been smudged with candlesmoke. The Tri-State Laundrymen came and heard reports, elected officers, had a banquet at the Richland House and departed to their several homes. But J. Hayden Witherbee stayed on, occupying the bridal chamber at the hotel--the one with the private bath attached; and so much interest and speculation did his presence create, and so much space did the Daily Evening News give in its valued columns to his comings and goings and his sayings and doings, that the name of J. Hayden Witherbee speedily became, as you might say, a household word throughout the breadth and length of the Daily Evening News' circulation.

It seemed that J. Hayden Witherbee, sitting there in his lofty office building far away in Wall Street, New York, had had his keen eye upon the town for some time; and yet--such were the inscrutable methods of the man--the town hadn't known anything about it, hadn't even suspected it. However, he had been watching its growth with the deepest interest; and when, by the count of the last United States census, it jumped from seventh in population in the state to fifth he could no longer restrain himself. He got aboard the first train and came right on. He had, it would appear, acted with such promptness because, in his own mind, he had already decided that the town would make an ideal terminal point for his proposed Tobacco & Cotton States Interurban Trolley line, which would in time link together with twin bonds of throbbing steel--the words are those of the reporter for the Daily Evening News--no less-than twenty-two growing towns, ranging southward from the river. Hence his presence, exuding from every pore, as it were, the very essences of power and influence and money. The paper said he was one of the biggest men in Wall Street, a man whose operations had been always conducted upon the largest scale.

This, within the space of three or four months, had been our second experience of physical contact with Eastern capital. The first one, though, had been in the nature of a disappointment. A man named Betts--Henry Betts--had come down from somewhere in the North and, for a lump sum, had bought outright the city gasworks. It was not such a big lump sum, because the gasworks had been built right after the war and had thereafter remained untouched by the stimulating hand of improvement. They consisted in the main of a crumbly little brick engine house, full of antiquated and self-willed machinery, and just below it, on the riverbank, a round and rusted gas tank, surrounded by sloping beds of coal cinders, through which at times sluggish rivulets of molten coal tar percolated like lava on the flanks of a toy volcano. The mains took in only the old part of town--not the new part; and the quality of illumination furnished was so flickery at all seasons and so given to freezing up in winter that many subscribers, including even the leading families, used coal-oil lamps in their bedchambers until the electric power house was built. A stock company of exceedingly conservative business men had owned the gasworks prior to the advent of Henry Betts, and the general manager of the plant had been Cassius Poindexter, a fellow townsman. Cash Poindexter was a man who, in his day, had tried his 'prentice hand at many things. At one time he traveled about in a democrat wagon, taking orders for enlarging crayon portraits from photographs and tintypes, and also for the frames to accompany the same.

At a more remote period he had been the authorized agent, on commission, for a lightning-rod company, selling rods with genuine guaranteed platinum tips; and rusty iron stringers, with forked tails, which still adhered to outlying farm buildings here and there in the county, testified to his activities in this regard. Again, Cash Poindexter had held the patent rights in four counties for an improved cream separator. In the early stages of the vogue for Belgian-hare culture in this country he was the first to import a family group of these interesting animals into our section. He had sold insurance of various sorts, including life, fire and cyclone; he was a notary public; he had tried real estate, and he had once enjoyed the distinction of having read lawbooks and works on medicine simultaneously. But in these, his later years, he had settled down more or less and had become general manager of the gasworks, which position also included the keeping of the books, the reading of meters and the making out and collecting of the monthly accounts. Nevertheless, he was understood to be working at spare moments on an invention that would make him independently wealthy for life. He was a tall, thin, sad man, with long, drooping aide whiskers; and he was continually combing back his side whiskers with both hands caressingly, and this gave him the appearance of a man parting a pair of string portières and getting ready to walk through them, but never doing so.

When this Mr. Betts came down from the North and bought the gasworks it was the general expectation that he would extensively overhaul and enlarge the plant; but he did nothing of the sort, seeming, on the contrary, to be amply satisfied with things as they were. He installed himself as general manager, retained Cash Poindexter as his assistant, and kept right on with the two Kettler boys as his engineers and the two darkies, Ed Greer and Lark Tilghman, as his firemen. He was a man who violated all traditions and ideals concerning how Northern capitalists ought to look. He neither wore a white piqué vest nor smoked long, black cigars; in fact, he didn't smoke at all. He was a short, square, iron-gray person, with a sort of dead and fossilized eye. He looked as though he might have been rough-hewn originally from one of those soapstone days which grow the harder with age and exposure. He had a hard, exact way of talking, and he wore a hard, exact suit of clothes which varied not, weekdays or Sundays, in texture or in cut.

In short, Mr. Henry Betts, the pioneer Eastern investor in those parts, was a profound disappointment as to personality and performances. Not so with J. Hayden Witherbee. From his Persian-lamb lapels to his patent-leather tips he was the physical embodiment of all the town had learned to expect of a visiting Wall Street capitalist. And he liked the town--that was plain. He spoke enthusiastically of the enterprise which animated it; he referred frequently and with praise to the awakening of the New South, and he was even moved to compliment publicly the cooking at the Richland House. It was felt that a stranger and a visitor could go no further.

Also, he moved fast, J. Hayden Witherbee did, showing the snap and push so characteristic of the ruling spirits of the great moneymarts of the East. Before he had been in town a week he had opened negotiations for the purchase outright of the new Light and Power Company, explaining frankly that if he could come to terms he intended making it a part of his projected interurban railway. Would the present owners care to sell at a fair valuation?--that was what Mr. Witherbee desired to know.

Would a drowning man grasp at a life-preserver? Would a famished colt welcome the return of its maternal parent at eventide? Would the present owners, carrying on their galled backs an unprofitable burden which local pride had forced upon them--would they sell? Here, as manna sent from Heaven by way of Wall Street, as you might say, was a man who would buy from them a property which had never paid and which might never pay; and who, besides, meant to do something noble and big for the town. Would they sell? Ask them something hard!

There was a series of conferences--if two conferences can be said to constitute a series--one in Mr. Witherbee's room at the hotel, where cigars of an unknown name but an impressive bigness were passed round freely; and one in the office of the president of the Planters' National Bank. Things went well and swimmingly from the first; Mr. J. Hayden Witherbee had a most clear and definite way of putting things; and yet, with all that, he was the embodiment of cordiality and courtesy. So charmed was Doctor Lake with his manner that he asked him, right in the midst of vital negotiations, if he were not of Southern descent; and when he confessed that his mother's people had come from Virginia Doctor Lake said he had felt it from the first moment they met, and insisted on shaking hands with Mr. Witherbee again.

“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Witherbee--this was said at the first meeting, the one in his room--“as I have already told you, I need this town as a terminal for my interurban road and I need your plant. I expect, of course, to enlarge it and to modernize it right up to the minute; but, so far as it goes, it is a very good plant and I want it. I suggest that you gentlemen, constituting the directors and the majority stockholders, get together between now and tomorrow--this evening, say--and put a price on the property. Tomorrow I will meet you again, here in this hotel or at any point you may select; and if the price you fix seems fair, and the papers prove satisfactory to my lawyers, I know of no reason why we cannot make a trade. Gentlemen, good day. Take another cigar all round before leaving.” They went apart and confabbed industriously--old Major Covington, who was the president of the Light and Power Company Doctor Lake and Captain Woodward, the two heaviest stockholders, Colonel Courtney Cope, the attorney for the company and likewise a director, and sundry others. Between themselves, being meanwhile filled with sweet and soothing thoughts, they named a price that would let them out whole, with a margin of interest on the original venture, and yet one which, everything considered--the growing population, the new suburbs and all that--was a decent enough price. They expected to be hammered down a few thousand and were prepared to concede something; but it would seem that the big men of the East did not do business in that huckstering, cheese-trimming way. Time to them was evidently worth more than the money to be got by long chaffering over a proposition.

“Gentlemen,” J. Hayden Witherbee had said right off, “the figures seem reasonable and moderate. I think I will buy from you.” A warm glow visibly lit up the faces of those who sat with him. It was as though J. Hayden Witherbee was an open fireplace and threw off a pleasant heat.

“I will take over these properties,” repeated Mr. J. Hayden Witherbee; “but on one condition--I also want the ownership of your local gasworks.”

There was a little pause and the glow died down a trifle--just the merest trifle. “But, sir, we do not own those gasworks,” said the stately Major Covington.

“I know that,” said Mr. Witherbee; “but the point is--can't you acquire them?”

“I suppose we might,” said the major; “but, Mr. Witherbee, that gasworks concern is worn out--our electric-light plant has nearly put it out of business.”

“I understand all that too,” Mr. Witherbee went on, “perfectly well. Gentlemen, where I come from we act quickly, but we look before we leap. During the past twenty-four hours I have examined into the franchise of those gasworks. I find that nearly forty years ago your common council issued to the original promoters and owners of the gas company a ninety-year charter, giving the use of any and all of your streets, not only for the laying of gas mains, but for practically all other purposes. It was an unwise thing to do, but it was done and it stands so today. Gentlemen, this is a growing community in the midst of a rich country. I violate no confidence in telling you that capital is looking this way. I am merely the forerunner--the first in the field. The Gatins crowd, in Chicago, has its eyes upon this territory, as I have reason to know. You are, of course, acquainted with the Gatins crowd?” he said in a tone of putting a question.

Major Covington, who made a point of never admitting that he didn't know everything, nodded gravely and murmured the name over to himself as though he were trying to remember Gatins' initials. The others sat silent, impressed more than ever with the wisdom of this stranger who had so many pertinent facts at his finger tips.

“Suppose now,” went on Mr. Witherbee--“suppose, now, that Ike Gratins and his crowd should come down here and find out what I have found out and should buy out that gas company. Why, gentlemen, under the terms of that old franchise, those people could actually lay tracks right through the streets of this little city of yours. They could parallel our lines--they could give us active opposition right here on the home ground. It might mean a hard fight. Therefore I need those gasworks. I may shut them up or I may run them--but I need them in my business.

“I have inquired into the ownership of this concern,” continued Mr. Witherbee before any one could interrupt him, “and I find it was recently purchased outright by a gentleman from somewhere up my way named--named--” He snapped his fingers impatiently.

“Named Betts,” supplied Doctor Lake--“named Henry Betts.”

“Quite so,” Mr. Witherbee assented. “Thank you, doctor--Betts is the name. Now the fact that the whole property is vested in one man simplifies the matter--doesn't it? Of course I would not care to go to this Mr. Betts in person. You understand that.” If they didn't understand they let on they did, merely nodding and waiting for more light to be let in.

“Once let it be known that I was personally interested in a consolidation of your lighting plants, and this Mr. Betts, if I know anything about human nature, would advance his valuation far beyond its proper figure. Therefore I cannot afford to be known in the matter. You see that?”

They agreed that they saw.

“So I would suggest that all of you--or some of you--go and call upon Mr. Betts and endeavor to buy the gasworks from him outright. If you can get the plant for anything like its real value you may include the amount in the terms of the proposition you have today made me and I will take over all of the properties together.