"You ought to be booted, the whole lot o' yeh!" he replied.
"That houn' in there's run the bank into the ground, with every cent o'
money we'd put in," said Barney. "I s'pose ye know that."
"Well, s'pose he has--what's the use o' jumpin' on 'im?"
"Git it out of his hide."
"I've heerd that talk before. How much you got in?"
"Two hundred dollars."
"Well, I've got two thousand." The crowd saw the point.
"I guess if anybody was goin' t' take it out of his hide, I'd be the man;
but I want the feller to live and have a chance to pay it back. Killin'
'im is a dead loss."
"That's so!" shouted somebody. "Mac ain't no fool, if he does chaw hay,"
said another, and the crowd laughed. They were losing that frenzy,
largely imitative and involuntary, which actuates a mob. There was
something counteracting in the ex-sheriff's cool, humorous tone.
"Give us the rest of it, Mac!"
"The rest of it is--clear out o' here, 'r I'll boot every mother's son of
yeh!"
"Can't do it!"
"Come down an' try it!"
McIlvaine opened the door and looked out. "Mac, Mrs. Sanford wants to say
something--if it's safe."
"Safe as eatin' dinner."
Mrs. Sanford came out, looking pale and almost like a child as she stood
beside her defender's towering bulk. But her face was resolute.
"That money will be paid back," she said, "dollar for dollar, if you'll
just give us a chance. As soon as Jim gets well enough every cent will be
paid, if I live."
The crowd received this little speech in silence. One or two said, in low
voices: "That's business. She'll do it, too, if any one can."
Barney pushed his way through the crowd with contemptuous curses.
"The------she will!" he said.
"We'll see 't you have a chance," McPhall and McIlvaine assured Mrs.
Sanford.
She went in and closed the door.
"Now git!" said Andrew, coming down the steps. The crowd scattered with
laughing taunts. He turned, and entered the house. The rest drifted off
down the street through the soft flurries of snow, and in a few moments
the street assumed its usual appearance.
The failure of the bank and the raid on the banker had passed into
history.
V
In the light of the days of calm afterthought which followed, this
attempt upon the peace of the Sanford home grew more monstrous, and
helped largely to mitigate the feeling against the banker. Besides, he
had not run away; that was a strong point in his favor.
"Don't that show," argued Vance, in the post-office--"don't that show he
didn't intend to steal? An' don't it show he's goin' to try to make
things square?"
"I guess we might as well think that as anything."
"I claim the boys has a right t' take sumpthin' out o' his hide," Bent
Wilson stubbornly insisted.
"Ain't enough t' go 'round," laughed McPhail. "Besides, I can't have it.
Link an' I own the biggest share in 'im, an' we can't have him hurt."
McIlvaine and Vance grinned. "That's a fact, Mac. We four fellers are the
main losers. He's ours, an' we can't have him foundered 'r crippled 'r
cut up in any way. Ain't that woman of his gritty?"
"Gritty ain't no name for her. She's goin' into business."
"So I hear. They say Jim was crawling around a little yesterday. I didn't
see 'im.
"I did. He looks pretty streak-id--now you bet."
"Wha'd he say for himself?"
"Oh, said give 'im time--he'd fix it all up."
"How much time?"
"Time enough. Hain't been able to look at a book since. Say, ain't it a
little curious he was so sick just then--sick as a p'isened dog?"
The two men looked at each other in a manner most comically significant.
The thought of poison was in the mind of each.
It was under these trying circumstances that Sanford began to crawl
about, a week or ten days after his sickness. It was really the most
terrible punishment for him. Before, everybody used to sing out, "Hello,
Jim!" or "Mornin', banker," or some other jovial, heart-warming
salutation. Now, as he went down the street, the groups of men smoking on
the sunny side of the stores ignored him, or looked at him with scornful
eyes.
Nobody said, "Hello, Jim!"--not even McPhail or Vance. They nodded
merely, and went on with their smoking. The children followed him and
stared at him without compassion. They had heard him called a scoundrel
and a thief too often at home to feel any pity for his pale face.
After his first trip down the street, bright with the December sunshine,
he came home in a bitter, weak mood, smarting, aching with a poignant
self-pity over the treatment he had received from his old cronies.
"It's all your fault," he burst out to his wife. "If you'd only let me go
away and look up another place I wouldn't have to put up with all these
sneers and insults."
"What sneers and insults?" she asked, coming over to him.
"Why, nobody 'll speak to me."
"Won't Mr. McPhail and Mr. McIlvaine?"
"Yes; but not as they used to."
"You can't blame 'em, Jim. You must go to work and win back their
confidence."
"I can't do that. Let's go away, Nell, and try again."
Her mouth closed firmly. A hard look came into her eyes. "You can go if
you want to, Jim. I'm goin' to stay right here till we can leave
honorably. We can't run away from this. It would follow us anywhere we
went; and it would get worse the farther we went."
He knew the unyielding quality of his wife's resolution, and from that
moment he submitted to his fate. He loved his wife and children with a
passionate love that made life with them, among the citizens he had
robbed, better than life anywhere else on earth; he had no power to leave
them.
As soon as possible he went over his books and found out that he owed,
above all notes coming in, about eleven thousand dollars. This was a
large sum to look forward to paying by anything he could do in the
Siding, now that his credit was gone. Nobody would take him as a clerk,
and there was nothing else to be done except manual labor, and he was not
strong enough for that.
His wife, however, had a plan. She sent East to friends for a little
money at once, and with a few hundred dollars opened a little store in
time for the holiday trade--wall-paper, notions, light dry-goods, toys,
and millinery. She did her own housework and attended to her shop in a
grim, uncomplaining fashion that made Sanford feel like a criminal in her
presence. He couldn't propose to help her in the store, for he knew the
people would refuse to trade with him, so he attended to the children and
did little things about the house for the first few months of the winter.
His life for a time was abjectly pitiful. He didn't know what to do. He
had lost his footing, and, worst of all, he felt that his wife no longer
respected him. She loved and pitied him, but she no longer looked up to
him. She went about her work and down to her store with a silent,
resolute, uncommunicative air, utterly unlike her former sunny, domestic
self, so that even she seemed alien like the rest. If he had been ill,
Vance and McPhail would have attended him; as it was, they could not help
him.
She already had the sympathy of the entire town, and McIlvaine had said:
"If you need more money, you can have it, Mrs. Sanford. Call on us at any
time."
"Thank you. I don't think I'll need it. All I ask is your trade," she
replied. "I don't ask anybody to pay more'n a thing's worth, either. I'm
goin' to sell goods on business principles, and I expect folks to buy of
me because I'm selling reliable goods as cheap as anybody else."
Her business was successful from the start, but she did not allow herself
to get too confident.
"This is a kind of charity trade. It won't last on that basis. Folks
ain't goin' to buy of me because I'm poor--not very long," she said to
Vance, who went in to congratulate her on her booming trade during
Christmas and New Year.
Vance called so often, advising or congratulating her, that the boys
joked him. "Say, looky here! You're goin' to get into a peck o' trouble
with your wife yet. You spend about half y'r time in the new store."
Vance looked serene as he replied, "I'd stay longer and go oftener if I
could."
"Well, if you ain't cheekier 'n ol' cheek! I should think you'd be
ashamed to say it."
"'Shamed of it? I'm proud of it! As I tell my wife, if I'd 'a' met Mis'
Sanford when we was both young, they wouldn't 'a' be'n no such present
arrangement."
The new life made its changes in Mrs. Sanford. She grew thinner and
graver, but as she went on, and trade steadily increased, a feeling of
pride, a sort of exultation, came into her soul and shone from her steady
eyes. It was glorious to feel that she was holding her own with men in
the world, winning their respect, which is better than their flattery.
She arose each day at five o'clock with a distinct pleasure, for her
physical health was excellent, never better.
She began to dream. She could pay off five hundred dollars a year of the
interest--perhaps she could pay some of the principal, if all went well.
Perhaps in a year or two she could take a larger store, and, if Jim got
something to do, in ten years they could pay it all off--every cent! She
talked with business men, and read and studied, and felt each day a
firmer hold on affairs.
Sanford got the agency of an insurance company or two, and earned a few
dollars during the spring. In June things brightened up a little. The
money for a note of a thousand dollars fell due--a note he had considered
virtually worthless, but the debtor, having had a "streak o' luck," sent
seven hundred and fifty dollars. Sanford at once called a meeting of his
creditors, and paid them, pro rata, a thousand dollars. The meeting took
place in his wife's store, and in making the speech Sanford said:
"I tell you, gentlemen, if you'll only give us a chance, we'll clear this
thing all up--that is, the principal. We can't--"
"Yes, we can, James. We can pay it all, principal and interest. We owe
the interest just as much as the rest." It was evident that there was to
be no letting down while she lived.
The effect of this payment was marked. The general feeling was much more
kindly than before. Most of the fellows dropped back into the habit of
calling him Jim; but, after all, it was not like the greeting of old,
when he was "banker." Still the gain in confidence found a reflex in him.
His shoulders, which had begun to droop a little, lifted, and his eyes
brightened.
"We'll win yet," he began to say.
"She's a-holdin' of 'im right to time," Mrs. Bingham said.
It was shortly after this that he got the agency for a new cash-delivery
system, and went on the road with it, travelling in northern Wisconsin
and Minnesota. He came back after a three weeks' trip, quite jubilant.
"I've made a hundred dollars, Nell. I'm all right if this holds out, and
I guess it will."
In the following November, just a year after the failure, they celebrated\
the day, at her suggestion, by paying interest on the unpaid sums they
owed.
"I could pay a little more on the principal," she explained, "but I guess
it 'll be better to use it for my stock. I can pay better dividends next
year.
"Take y'r time, Mrs. Sanford," Vance said.
Of course she could not escape criticism. There were the usual number of
women who noticed that she kept her "young uns" in the latest style, when
as a matter of fact she sat up nights to make their little things. They
also noticed that she retained her house and her furniture.
"If I was in her place, seems to me, I'd turn in some o' my fine
furniture toward my debts," Mrs. Sam Gilbert said, spitefully.
She did not even escape calumny. Mrs. Sam Gilbert darkly hinted at
certain "goin's on durin' his bein' away. Lit up till after midnight some
nights. I c'n see her winder from mine."
Rose McPhail, one of Mrs. Sanford's most devoted friends, asked, quietly,
"Do you sit up all night t' see?"
"S'posin' I do!" she snapped. "I can't sleep with such things goin' on."
"If it'll do you any good, Jane, I'll say that she's settin' up there
sewin' for the children. If you'd keep your nose out o' other folks'
affairs, and attend better to your own, your house wouldn't look like a
pig-pen, an' your children like A-rabs."
But in spite of a few annoyances of this character Mrs. Sanford found her
new life wholesomer and broader than her old life, and the pain of her
loss grew less poignant.