Just why Receiver Guilford, an officer of the court who was supposed to be
nursing an insolvent railroad to the end that its creditors might not lose
all, should begin by declaring war on the road's revenue, was a question
which the managers of competing lines strove vainly to answer. But when,
in defiance of all precedent, he made the cut rates effective to and from
all local stations on the Trans-Western, giving the shippers at
intermediate and non-competitive points the full benefit of the
reductions, the railroad colony denounced him as a madman and gave him a
month in which to find the bottom of a presumably empty treasury.
But the event proved that the major's madness was not altogether without
method. It is an axiom in the carrying trade that low rates make business;
create it, so to speak, out of nothing. Given an abundant crop, low
prices, and high freight rates in the great cereal belt, and, be the
farmers never so poor, much of the grain will be stored and held against
the chance of better conditions.
So it came about that Major Guilford's relief measure was timed to a
nicety, and the blanket cut in rates opened a veritable flood-gate for
business in Trans-Western territory. From the day of its announcement the
traffic of the road increased by leaps and bounds. Stored grain came out
of its hiding places at every country cross-roads to beg for cars; stock
feeders drove their market cattle unheard-of distances, across the tracks
of competing lines, over and around obstacles of every sort, to pour them
into the loading corrals of the Trans-Western.
Nor was the traffic all outgoing. With the easing of the money burden, the
merchants in the tributary towns began thriftily to take advantage of the
low rates to renew their stocks; long-deferred visits and business trips
suddenly became possible; and the saying that it was cheaper to travel
than to stay at home gained instant and grateful currency.
In a short time the rolling stock of the road was taxed to its utmost
capacity, and the newly appointed purchasing agent was buying cars and
locomotives right and left. Also, to keep pace with the ever-increasing
procession of trains, a doubled construction force wrought night and day
installing new side tracks and passing points.
Under the fructifying influence of such a golden shower of prosperity,
land values began to rise again, slowly at first, as buyers distrusted the
continuance of the golden shower; more rapidly a little later, as the
Guilford policy defined itself in terms of apparent permanence.
Towns along the line--hamlets long since fallen into the way-station rut
of desuetude--awoke with a start, bestirring themselves joyfully to meet
the inspiriting conditions. At Midland City, Stephen Hawk, the new
right-of-way agent, ventured to ask municipal help to construct a ten-mile
branch to Lavabee: it was forthcoming promptly; and the mass meeting, at
which the bond loan was anticipated by public subscription shouted itself
hoarse in enthusiasm.
At Gaston, where Hawk asked for a donation of land whereon the company
might build the long-promised division repair-shops, people fought with
one another to be first among the donors. And at Juniberg, where the
company proposed to establish the first of a series of grain
subtreasuries--warehouses in which the farmers of the surrounding country
could store their products and borrow money on them from the railroad
company at the rate of three per cent, per annum--at Juniberg enough money
was subscribed to erect three such depots as the heaviest tributary crop
could possibly fill.
It was while the pendulum of prosperity was in full swing that David Kent
took a day off from sweating over his problem of ousting the receiver and
ran down to Gaston. Single-eyed as he was in the pursuit of justice, he
was not unmindful of the six lots standing in his name in the Gaston
suburb, and from all accounts the time was come to dispose of them.
He made the journey in daylight, with his eyes wide open and the mental
pencil busy at work noting the changes upon which the State press had been
dilating daily, but which he was now seeing for the first time. They were
incontestable--and wonderful. He admitted the fact without prejudice to a
settled conviction that the sun-burst of prosperity was merely another
brief period of bubble-blowing. Towns whose streets had been grass-grown
since the day when each in turn had surrendered its right to be called the
terminus of the westward-building railroad, were springing into new life.
The song of the circular saw, the bee-boom of the planing-mill and the
tapping of hammers were heard in the land, and the wayside hamlets were
dotted with new roofs. And Gaston----
But Gaston deserved a separate paragraph in the mental note-book, and Kent
accorded it, marveling still more. It was as if the strenuous onrush of
the climaxing Year Three had never been interrupted. The material for the
new company shops was arriving by trainloads, and an army of men was at
work clearing the grounds. On a siding near the station a huge grain
elevator was rising. In the streets the hustling activity of the
"terminus" period was once more in full swing; and at the Mid-Continent
Kent had some little difficulty in securing a room.
He was smoking his after-dinner cigar in the lobby of the hotel and trying
as he might to orient himself when Blashfield Hunnicott drifted in. Kent
gave the sometime local attorney a cigar, made room for him on the
plush-covered settee, and proceeded to pump him dry of Gaston news. Summed
up, the inquiries pointed themselves thus: was there any basis for the
Gaston revival other than the lately changed attitude of the railroad? In
other words, if the cut rates should be withdrawn and the railroad
activities cease, would there not be a second and still more disastrous
collapse of the Gaston bubble?
Pressed hardly, Hunnicott admitted the probability; given another turn,
the screw of inquiry squeezed out an admission of the fact, slurred over
by the revivalist, that the railway company's treasury was really the
alms-box into which all hands were dipping.
"One more question and I'll let up on you," said Kent. "It used to be said
of you in the flush times that you kept tab on the real estate transfers
when everybody else was too busy to read the record. Do you still do it?"
Hunnicott laughed uneasily.
"Rather more than ever just now, as you'd imagine."
"It is well. Now you know the members of the old gang, from his Excellency
down. Tell me one thing: are they buying or selling?"
Hunnicott sprang up and slapped his leg.
"By Jupiter, Kent! They are selling--every last man of them!"
"Precisely. And when they have sold all they have to sell?"
"They'll turn us loose--drop us--quit booming the town, if your theory is
the right one. But say, Kent, I can't believe it, you know. It's too big a
thing to be credited to Jim Guilford and his handful of subs in the
railroad office. Why, it's all along the line, everywhere."
"I'm telling you that Guilford isn't the man. He is only a cog in the
wheel. There is a bigger mind than his behind it."
"I can't help it," Hunnicott protested. "I don't believe that any man or
clique could bring this thing about unless we were really on the upturn."
"Very good; believe what you please, but do as I tell you. Sell every foot
of Gaston dirt that stands in your name; and while you are about it, sell
those six lots for me in Subdivision Five. More than that, do it pretty
soon."
Hunnicott promised, in the brokerage affair, at least. Then he switched
the talk to the receivership.
"Still up in the air, are you, in the railroad grab case?"
Kent nodded.
"No news of MacFarlane?"
"Plenty of it. His health is still precarious, and will likely remain so
until the spoilsmen have picked the skeleton clean."
Hunnicott was silent for a full minute. Then he said:
"Say, Kent, hasn't it occurred to you that they are rather putting meat on
the bones instead of taking it off? Their bills for betterments must be
out of sight."
It had occurred to Kent, but he gave his own explanation of Major
Guilford's policy in a terse sentence.
"It is a part of the bluff; fattening the thing a little before they
barbecue it."
"I suppose so. It's a pity we don't live a little farther back in the
history of the world: say at a time when we could hire MacFarlane's doctor
to obliterate the judge, and no questions asked."
Who can explain how it is that some jesting word, trivial and purposeless
it may be, will fire a hidden train of thought which was waiting only for
some chance spark? "Obliterate the judge," said Hunnicott in grim jest;
and straightway Kent saw possibilities; saw a thing to be done, though not
yet the manner of its doing.
"If you'll excuse me," he said abruptly to his companion, "I believe I'll
try to catch the Flyer back to the capital. I came down to see about
selling those lots of mine, but if you will undertake it for me----"
"Of course," said Hunnicott; "I'll be only too glad. You've ten minutes:
can you make it?"
Kent guessed so, and made the guess a certainty with two minutes to spare.
The through sleeper was lightly loaded, and he picked out the most
unneighbored section, of the twelve, being wishful only for undisturbed
thinking ground. But before the train had swung past the suburb lights of
Gaston, the smoker's unrest seized him and the thought-wheels demanded
tobacco. Kent fought it as long as he could, making sure that the
smoking-compartment liars' club would be in session; but when the demand
became a nagging insistence, he found his pipe and tobacco and went to the
men's room.
The little den behind the drawing-room had but one occupant besides the
rear-end brakeman---a tall, saturnine man in a gray grass-cloth duster who
was smoking a Porto Rican stogie. Kent took a second look and held out his
hand.
"This is an unexpected pleasure, Judge Marston. I was counting on three
hours of solitary confinement."
The lieutenant-governor acknowledged the hand-clasp, nodded, and made room
on the leather-covered divan for the new-comer. Hildreth, the editor of
the _Argus_, put it aptly when he said that the grim-faced old cattle king
had "blown" into politics. He was a compromise on the People's Party
ticket; was no part of the Bucks programme, and had been made to feel it.
Tradition had it that he had been a terror to the armed and organized
cattle thieves of the early days; hence the brevet title of "Judge." But
those that knew him best did not know that he had once been the brightest
man upon the Supreme Bench of his native state: this before failing health
had driven him into exile.
As a mixer, the capital had long since voted Oliver Marston a conspicuous
failure. A reticent, reserved man by temperament and habit, and with both
temperament and habit confirmed by his long exile on the cattle ranges, he
had grown rather less than more talkative after his latest plunge into
public life; and even Miss Van Brock confessed that she found him
impossible on the social side. None the less, Kent had felt drawn toward
him from the first; partly because Marston was a good man in bad company,
and partly because there was something remindful of the elder Kent in the
strong face, the slow smile and the introspective eye of the old man from
the hill country.
For a time the talk was a desultory monologue, with Kent doing his best to
keep it from dying outright. Later, when he was fairly driven in upon his
reserves, he began to speak of himself, and of the hopeless fight for
enlargement in the Trans-Western struggle. Marston lighted the
match-devouring stogie for the twentieth time, squared himself on the end
of the divan and listened attentively. At the end of the recounting he
said:
"It seems to be a failure of justice, Mr. Kent. Can you prove your
postulate?"
"I can. With fifteen minutes more on the day of the preliminary hearing I
should have shown it to any one's satisfaction."
Marston went into a brown study with his eyes fixed upon the
stamped-leather devil in the panel at the opposite end of the compartment.
When he spoke again, Kent wondered at the legal verbiage, and still more
at the clear-cut, judicial opinion.
"The facts in the case, as you state them, point to judicial connivance,
and we should always be slow to charge that, Mr. Kent. Technically, the
court was not at fault. Due notice was served on the company's attorney of
record, and you admit, yourself, that the delay, short as it was, would
have been sufficient if you had not been accidentally detained. And, since
there were no contravening affidavits submitted, Judge MacFarlane was
technically warranted in granting the prayer for a temporary receiver."
"I'm not trying to refute that," said Kent. "But afterward, when I called
upon the judge with the evidence in hand----"
"He was under no absolute obligation to retry the case out of court, as
you know, Mr. Kent. Neither was he obliged to give you an unofficial
notice of the day upon which he would hear your motion for the discharge
of the receiver and the vacation of his order appointing him."
"Under no absolute legal obligation, perhaps," retorted Kent. "But the
moral obligation--"
"We are coming to that. I have been giving you what would probably be a
minority opinion of an appellate court, if you could take an appeal. The
majority opinion might take higher ground, pointing to the manifest
injustice done to the defendant company by the shortness of the delay
granted; by Judge MacFarlane's refusal to continue the hearing for one
hour, though your attorney was present and pleading for the same; and
lastly for the indefinite postponement of the hearing on the merits on
insufficient grounds, since the judge was not at the time, and has not
since been, too ill to attend to the routine duties of his office."
Kent looked up quickly.
"Judge Marston, do you know that last assertion to be true?" he demanded.
The slow smile came and went in the introspective eyes of the older man.
"I have been giving you the opinion of the higher court," he said, with
his nearest approach to jocoseness. "It is based upon the supposition that
your allegations would be supported by evidence."
Kent smoked on in silence while the train measured the rail-lengths
between two of the isolated prairie stations. When he spoke again there
was honest deference in his manner.
"Mr. Marston, you have a far better right to your courtesy title of
'Judge' than that given by the Great American Title Company, Unlimited,"
he said. "Will you advise me?"
"As plain Oliver Marston, and a man old enough to be your father, yes.
What have you been doing? Trying to oust the receiver, I suppose."
"Yes; trying to find some technical flaw by which he could be ousted."
"It can't be done. You must strike higher. Are you fully convinced of
Judge MacFarlane's venality?"
"As fully as I can be without having seen with my own eyes and heard with
my own ears."
Marston opened his watch and looked at it. Then he lighted another of the
villainous little cigars.
"We have an hour yet," he said. "You have been giving me the legal points
in the case: now give me the inferences--all of them."
Kent laughed.
"I'm afraid I sha'n't be able to forget the lieutenant-governor. I shall
have to call some pretty hard names."
"Call them," said his companion, briefly; and Kent went deep into the
details, beginning with the formation of the political gang in Gaston the
dismantled.
The listener in the gray dust-coat heard him through without comment. When
Kent reached the end of the inferences, telling the truth without scruple
and letting the charge of political and judicial corruption lie where it
would, the engineer was whistling for the capital.
"You have told me some things I knew, and some others that I only
suspected," was all the answer he got until the train was slowing into the
Union Station. Then as he flung away the stump of the little cigar the
silent one added: "If I were in your place, Mr. Kent, I believe I should
take a supplementary course of reading in the State law."
"In what particular part of it?" said Kent, keen anxiety in every word.
"In that part of the fundamental law which relates to the election of
circuit judges, let us say. If I had your case to fight, I should try to
obliterate Judge MacFarlane."
Kent had but a moment in which to remark the curious coincidence in the
use of precisely the same word by both Hunnicott and his present adviser.
"But, my dear sir! we should gain nothing by MacFarlane's removal when his
successor would be appointed by the executive!"
Marston turned in the doorway of the smoking-compartment and laid a
fatherly hand on the younger man's shoulder.
"My boy, I didn't say 'remove'; I said 'obliterate'. Good night."