THE FAT YEARS
"The lean years have passed, and I approve of these fat ones."
"Be careful, old man. That way lies bad work."
--_The Light That Failed._
John Jacobs little realized how true was his estimate of the firm of
"Champers & Co." Nor did he suspect that at this very minute the firm was
in council in the small room beyond the partition wall--the "blind tiger"
of the Wyker eating-house.
"I tell you it's our chance," Darley Champers was declaring emphatically.
"You mustn't hold back your capital now. This firm isn't organized to
promote health nor Sunday Schools nor some other fellow's fortune. We are
together for yours truly, every one of us. If you two have some other
games back of your own pocketbooks, they don't cut any against this common
purpose. I'm for business for Darley Champers. That's why I'm here. I've
got no love for Doc Carey, ruling men's minds like they was all putty, and
him a putty knife to shape 'em finer yet. And another fellow I'd like to
put down so hard he'll never get over it is that straight-up-and-down
farmer, Asher Aydelot of the Sunflower Ranch, who walks like a military
captain, and works like a hired man, and is so danged independent he don't
give a damn for no man's opinion of him. If it hadn't been for him we'd a
had the whole Grass River Valley now to speculate on. I'm something of a
danged fool, but I knowed this boom was comin'. I felt it in my craw."
"So you always said, Champers," Thomas Smith broke in, "but it's been a
century coming. And look at the capital I've sunk. If you'd worked that
deal through, time of the drouth in seventy-four, we'd be in clover and no
Careyville and no Aydelots in the way. I could have saved Asher's little
bank stock then, too."
"You could?" Darley Champers stared at the speaker.
"Yes, if he'd given up right that first trip of yours down there. When he
refused I knew his breed too well. He's as set and slow and stubborn as
his old dad ever was. That's what ailed those two, they were too near
alike; and you'll never catch Asher Aydelot bending to our plans now. I
warn you."
"Well, but about this bank account?" Champers queried.
"Oh, the fates played the devil with everything in two weeks. Doc Carey
got in with Miss Jane Aydelot down at Philadelphia, and she came straight
to Cloverdale, and, womanlike, made things so hot there I had to let loose
of everything at once or lose everything I had saved for myself. Serves
her right, for Asher's pile went into the dump, although there's naturally
no love lost between the two. But this Miss Jane is Aydelot clear through.
She's so honest and darned set you can't budge her. But she's a timid
woman and so she's safe if you keep out of her range. She won't chase you
far, but she's got fourteen rattles and a button."
"Well, well, let her rattle, and get to pusiness," Hans Wyker demanded.
"Here's Champers says he's here yust for pusiness and he wants to get
Aydelot and Carey, too."
"Gentlemen!" Champers struck the table with his fist. "Let's play fair
now, so's not to spoil each other's games. I'll fix Aydelot if it's in me
to do it, just because he's stood in my way once too often. But he's my
side line, him and Carey is. I'm here for business. Tell me what you are
here for."
Hans Wyker's little eyes were red with pent-up anger and malice as he
burst out:
"Shentlemen, you know my hart luck. You see where I be today. I not repeat
no tiresome history here. Kansas yust boomin'! Wykerton dead! Yon Yacob
own all der groun' right oop to der corporation line on tree side, an' he
not sell one inch for attitions to dis town. He say dere notings to keep
town goin' in two, tree year. What we care? We be rich by den an' let it
go to der devil. But he not sell. Den I go mit you and we organize town
company. We mark townsite, we make Grass River sell to us. We boom! boom!
boom! We knock Careyville from de prairie alretty, mak' Yon Yacob go back
to Cincinnati where he belong mit his Chews. He damned queer Chew, but he
Chew all de same all right, all right. I want to down Yon Yacob, an' I do
it if it take tree hundred fifty years. I'll kill him if he get in my way.
I hate him. He run me off my saloon in ol' Carey Crossin'; my prewery
goin' smash mit der damned prohibittery law; he growin' rich in
Careyville, an' me!"
His voice rose to a shriek and he stamped his foot in rage.
"Hold your noise, Wyker!" Champers growled. "Don't you know who's on the
other side of that partition?"
"I built that partition mineself. It's von dead noise-breaker," Wyker
began. But Champers broke in:
"It's your turn, Smith."
Dr. Carey had described Smith once as rather small, with close-set dark
eyes and a stiff, half-paralyzed right arm and wrist, a man who wrote in a
cramped left-handed style. There was a crooked little scar cutting across
his forehead now above the left eye that promised to stay there for life.
He had a way of evading a direct gaze, suggesting timidity. And when Hans
Wyker had threatened to kill John Jacobs he shivered a little, and for the
instant a gray pallor crept across his face, unnoted by his companions.
"We propose to start a town in the Grass River country that will kill
Careyville. We two put up the capital. You do the buying and selling.
We'll handle real estate lively for a few months. We'll advertise till we
fill the place with buyers, and we'll make our pile right there and
then--and it's all to be done by Darley Champers & Co. We two are not to
be in the open in the game at all."
Thomas Smith spoke deliberately. There seemed to be none of Champers'
bluster nor Wyker's malice in the third part of the company, or else he
was better schooled in self-control.
"You have it exactly," Champers declared. "The first thing is to take in
fellows like Jim Shirley and Cyrus Bennington and Todd Stewart, and
Aydelot, if we can."
"Yes, if we can, but we can't," Thomas Smith insisted.
"And having got the land, with or without their knowing why, we boom her
to destruction. But to be fair, now, why do you want to keep yourself in
hiding, and who's the fellow you want to kill?" Darley Champers said with
a laugh.
"I may as well let you know now why I can't be known in this," Thomas
Smith said smoothly, even if the same gray hue did flit like a shadow a
second time across his countenance--a thing that did not escape the shrewd
eye of Darley Champers this time.
"Wyker is pitted against Jacobs. You are after Asher Aydelot's scalp, if
you can get it. I must get Jim Shirley, fair or foul."
Smith's low voice was full of menace, boding more trouble to his man than
the bluster and threat of the other two could compass.
"I paid you well, Darley Champers, for all information concerning Jim when
I came here fifteen years ago. I was acting under orders, and as Jim would
have known me then I had to keep out of sight a little."
"Vell, and vot has Shirley ever done mit you that you so down on him?"
Hans Wyker asked.
The smooth mask did not drop from Smith's face, save that the small dark
eyes burned with an intense glow.
"I tell you I was acting under orders from Shirley's brother Tank in
Cloverdale, Ohio. And if Dr. Carey hadn't been so blamed quick I'd have
gotten a letter Mrs. Tank Shirley had written to Jim the very day I got to
Carey's Crossing. No brother ever endured more from the hands of a
relative than Tank Shirley endured from Jim. In every way Jim tried to
defraud him of his rights; tried to prejudice their own father against
him; tried to rob him of the girl, a rich girl, too, that he married in
spite Of Jim--and at last contrived to prejudice his wife against him, and
with Jane Aydelot interfering all the time, like the old maid that she is,
managed to get Tank Shirley's only child away from him and given legally
to Jim. Do you wonder Tank hates his brother? You wouldn't if I dared to
tell you all of Jim's cussedness, but some things I'm sworn to secrecy on.
That's Tank's streak of kindness he can't overcome. Gets it from his
mother. I'm his agent, and I'm paid for my work. You both understand me, I
reckon."
"We unterstant, an' we stay py you to der ent," Hans Wyker exclaimed
enthusiastically. But Darley Champers had a different mind.
"I'll watch you, my man, and I'll do business with you accordin'," he said
to himself. "Devil knows whether you are Thomas Smith workin' for Tank
Shirley, or Tank Shirley workin' for hisself under a assoomed name. Long
as I get your capital to push my business I don't care who you are." Aloud
he remarked:
"So that's how Jim Shirley got that little girl. She's a comely youngun,
anyhow. But Smith, since you are only an agent and nobody knows it but us,
why keep yourself so secret? Where's the harm in letting Shirley lay eyes
on you? Why not come out into the open? How'll Shirley know you from the
Mayor of Wilmington, Delaware, anyhow?"
Thomas Smith's face was ashy and his voice was hoarse with anger as he
replied:
"Because I'm not now from Wilmington, Delaware, any more than I ever was.
I'm from Cloverdale, Ohio. You know, Wyker, how I lost money in your
brewery, investing in machinery and starting the thing, only to go to
smash on us."
He turned on Hans fiercely.
"And you know how I lost by you in this town and the land around it. It
was my money took up all this ground to help build up Wykerton and you, as
my agent, sold every acre of it to Jacobs."
This as fiercely as Darley Champers.
Both men nodded and Darley broke in:
"I was honest. I thought Jacobs was gettin' it to boom Wykerton with, or
I'd never sold. And him bein' right here was a danged sight easier'n
havin' some man in Wilmington, Delaware, to write to. That's why I let him
in on three sides, appealin' to his pride."
But Thomas Smith stopped him abruptly.
"Hold on! You need money to push your schemes now. And I'm the one who
does the financing for you."
Both men agreed.
"Then it's death to either of you if you ever tell a word of this. You
understand that? I'm not to be known here because I'm a dead man. I'm the
cashier that was mixed up in the Cloverdale bank affair. And, as I say, if
Jane Aydelot had let things alone Tank Shirley and I could have pulled out
honorably, but, womanlike, because she had a lot of bank stock and was the
biggest loser of anybody, in her own mind, she pushed things where a man
would not have noticed or kept still, and she kept pushing year after
year. Damn a woman, anyhow! All I could do at last was to commit suicide.
Tank planned it. It saved me and helped Tank. You see, Miss Jane had a
line around his neck, too. She was the only one who really saw me go down
and she spread the report that I'd committed suicide on account of the
bank failure. So, gentlemen, I'm really drowned in Clover Creek right
above where the railroad grade that cuts the Aydelot farm reaches the
water."
Darley Champers wondered why Thomas Smith was so particular in his
description.
"I've known Jim Shirley all my life. He was as bad a boy as ever left
Cloverdale, Ohio, under a cloud. Got into trouble over some girl, I
believe, finally. But you can see why I'm out of this game when it comes
to the open. And maybe you could understand, if you knew the brothers as
well as I do, why Tank keeps me after him. And I'll get him yet."
The vengeance of the last words was venomous.
"Well, now we understand each other we'll not be tramping on anybody's
corns," Darley Champers urged, anxious to get away from the subject.
With all of his shortcomings he was a man of different mould from the
other men. Eagerness to represent and invest large capital and to make by
far the best of a bargain by any means just inside the law were his
besetments. But he had not the unremitting hatred that enslaved Thomas
Smith and Hans Wyker.
Champers' store of energy seemed exhaustless. Following this council he
fell upon the Grass River Valley and threshed it to his profit.
One mid-June evening the Grass River schoolhouse was lighted early, while
up from the prairie ranches came the work-worn farmers.
This year the crop outlook was bad, yet somehow an expectant spirit lifted
sagging shoulders and looked out through hopeful eyes.
While the men exchanged neighborly greetings, a group of children, the
second generation in the valley, romped about in the twilight outside.
"Here comes Thaine," they shouted as Asher Aydelot and his boy came down
the trail.
"Come on, Thaine," Leigh Shirley said, reaching for his hand. "We are
going to play drop the handkerchief."
"Thaine's going to stand by me," pretty Jo Bennington declared, pushing
Leigh boisterously aside.
Josephine, the week-old baby Mrs. Aydelot had gone to see one day nine
years ago, had grown into a big, black-eyed, rosy-cheeked girl who lorded
it over every other child in the neighborhood. And every other child
submitted except Leigh Shirley, who had a quiet habit of going straight
ahead about her affairs in a way that vexed the pretty Jo not a little.
From the first coming of Leigh among the children Jo had resented her
independence. But, young as they all were, she objected most to Thaine
Aydelot's claiming Leigh as his playmate. Thaine was Jo's idol from
earliest memory.
"What's the row here?" Todd Stewart, Junior, broke in. "You mustn't fuss
or you'll all have to go in and listen to Darley Champers and I'll play
out here by myself."
Todd was a young-hearted, half-grown boy now, able to work all day in the
hayfield or to romp like a child with younger children in the evening. He
was half a dozen years older than Thaine and Jo, a difference that would
tend to disappear by the end of a decade.
"We'll be good, Toddie, if you'll let us stay and you'll play with us,"
the children entreated, and the game began, with Thaine between Leigh and
Jo.
When Asher Aydelot joined the group inside Darley Champers rapped on the
desk and called the men to order.
"Gentlemen, let's have a businesslike proceeding," he said. "Who shall
preside at the meeting?"
"I move Jim Shirley be made chairman. He's the best looking man here,"
Todd Stewart said, half seriously.
The motion carried and Jim, looking big and handsome and kindly as always,
took the chair.
"I'll ask Mr. Champers to state the purpose of the meeting," he said.
"Gentlemen," Champers began with tremendous dignity, "I represent the firm
of the Champers Town Company, just chartered, with half a million dollars'
capital. Gentlemen, you have the finest valley in Kansas."
The same was said of every other valley in Kansas in the fat years of the
boom. But to do Darley justice, he had never made a finer effort in his
life of many efforts than he was bent on making tonight.
"And this site is the garden spot of it all," he continued. "The
elevation, the water power at the deep bend of Grass River (where at that
moment only a trace of water marked the river's grassy right of way), the
fine farming land--everything ready for a sudden leap into prosperity.
And, gentlemen, the A. and T. (Arctic and Tropic) North and South Railroad
will begin grading down this very stream inside of thirty days. A town
here this year will be a city next year, a danged sight bigger city than
Careyville will ever be. Why, that town's got its growth and is beginning
to decay right now. The A. and T. will miss it comin' south, by ten
mile."
He paused and looked at the men before him. They were farmers, drooped to
rest after the long summer day's work, yet they listened with intense
eagerness. Only Asher Aydelot sat in easy dignity, looking straight at
Darley Champers with steady interest. The four years' training in the
University of the Civil War had not been overcome by his hold on the plow
handles. And no farmer will grow hopelessly stooped in shoulders and sad
of countenance who lifts his face often from the clods beneath his feet to
the stars above his head.
"You all know crops was poor last year and only moderately promisin' this
year," Champers continued. "But this is temporary and you are stayers, as
I can testify. The Champers Town Company is ready to locate a townsite and
start a town right here at the deep bend of Grass River. We propose to
plat the prairie into town lots with a public square for the courthouse
and sites for the railroad station and grain elevators, a big hotel, an
opera house, and factories and foundries that's bound to come."
The speaker paused a moment. Then the inspiration of the evening came to
him.
"When you first came here, Aydelot, there wasn't nothing but imagination
to make this a farming community. And it looked lots more impossible then
than this looks to me now. What's to prevent a metropolis risin' right
here where a decade and a half ago there wasn't nothing but bare
prairie?"
The appeal was forceful, and the very men who had stood like heroes
against hardships and had fought poverty with a grim, unyielding
will-power, the same men fell now before Darley Champers' smooth advances.
"Our company's chartered with no end of stock for sale now that in six
months will be out of sight above par and can't be bought for no price.
It's your time to invest now. You can easy mortgage your farms to raise
the money, seein' you can knock the mortgage off so quick and have
abundance left over, if you use your heads 'stead of your tired legs to
make money out of your land."
Cyrus Bennington and Todd Stewart and Jim Shirley, with others, were
sitting upright with alert faces now. Booms were making men rich all over
Kansas. Why should prosperity not come to this valley as well? It was not
impossible, surely. Only the unpleasant memory of Champers' holding back
the supplies in the days when the grasshopper was a burden would intrude
on the minds of the company tonight. Champers was shrewd to remember also,
and he played his game daringly as well as cautiously.
"Maybe some of you fellows haven't felt right toward me sometimes," he
said. "I hate to tell it now, but justice is justice. The truth is, it was
a friend of yours who advised me not to let any supplies come your way,
time of the grasshopper raid. I listened to him then and didn't know no
better'n to be run by him till I see his scheme to kill Wykerton an' build
a town for hisself. He'll deny it now, declare he never done it, and he'll
not do a thing for your town down here. See if he does. But it's Gawd's
truth, he held me back so's he could run you his way. It's your turn to
listen to me now and believe me, too."
And well they listened, especially the men who still owed John Jacobs for
the loan of 1874.
"You can have a boom right here that'll make you all rich men inside of a
year. Why not turn capitalists yourselves for a while, you hard-working
farmers. Money is easy and credit long, now. Take your chance at it and
make five hundred per cent on your investments. I'm ready to take
subscriptions for stock in this new town right now. Why not stop this
snail's pace of earnin' and go to livin' like gentlemen--like some
Careyville men I know who own hundreds of acres they never earned and they
won't improve so's to help others?"
"You're right there," a farmer sitting beside Asher Aydelot called out.
"We all know how Careyville got her start. It's kept some of us poor doing
it. I'll invest in Town Company stock right now."
Asher Aydelot turned toward the speaker in surprise.
"Jacobs helped you out as well as the rest of us in the drouth and
grasshopper time of seventy-four," he said. "What's your grievance against
him now?"
"Yes, and hung onto me like a leech of a Jew ever since," the man
muttered.
"Because you never paid either interest or principal. And Jacobs has
carried you along and waited your time," Asher asserted frankly.
But the farmer plunged into the discussion again, not realizing that his
grudge against Careyville was the outgrowth of his own shortcomings.
"Take this site right here in the middle of your neighborhood where you've
already got your church and your schoolhouse, and your graveyard,"
Champers declared. "Aydelot here gave part of it and Pryor Gaines the
rest. Gaines don't farm it any more himself, it's most too big a job for a
man of brains like him. And that quarter across the river that used to be
all sand, you own that now, Aydelot, don't you? What did you think of
doin' with it now?"
"I think I'll set it in alfalfa this fall," Asher replied.
"Yes, yes, now these two make the very site we want. You are lucky, for
you are ready right now to start things. How much stock do you want,
Aydelot, and how will you sell?"
As Asher listened he seemed to see the whole scheme of the town builder
bare itself before him, and he wondered at the credulity of his
neighbors.
"Gentlemen," he said, standing before them, "it is a hard thing to put
yourself against neighborhood sentiment and not seem to be selfish. But as
I was the first man in this valley and have known every man who settled
here since, I ought to be well enough known to you to need no certificate
of good moral character here. I offer no criticism on the proposition
before you. You are as capable of judging as I am. The end may show you
more capable, but I decline to buy stock, or to donate, or sell any land
for a townsite at the deep bend of Grass River. A man's freehold is his
own."
Asher's influence had led in Grass River affairs for years. But Darley
Champers had the crowd in the hollow of his paw tonight.
"How about Gaines?" he demanded. "You join him on the south. You ought to
know some of his notions."
"Gaines has no land to consider," Asher said frankly. "He sold it more
than a year ago."
"You mean the Jew foreclosed on the preacher, don't you?" someone said
sarcastically.
"You'll have to ask the preacher," Asher replied good-naturedly. "I
didn't understand it so at the time. But as for myself, I'm no boomer. I
stand for the prosperity that builds from day to day, and stays built. The
values here are in the soil, not in the shining bubbles that glitter and
burst on top of it. You'll have to count me out of your scheme. I'm a
farmer still. So I'll wish you all good luck and good night."
"Good night, I must go with papa," Thaine Aydelot said, springing up from
his play outside.
"No, you've got to stay here. Hold him, Leigh," Jo Bennington commanded,
clutching at Thaine's arm.
Leigh sat calmly disobedient.
"He's his papa's boy, I guess, and he ought to go," she asserted.
"You meany, meany," Jo whispered, "I don't like you."
But Leigh paid little heed to her opinion.
As Asher passed out of the room there was an ugly look in Darley Champers'
eyes.
"No more ambition than a cat. One of them quiet, good-natured fellers that
are as stubborn as the devil once they take a stand. Just a danged
clod-hopper farmer, but he don't leave no enemies behind him. That's
enough to make any man hate him. He's balked twice when I tried to drive.
I'll not be fooled by him always."
So Champers thought as he watched Asher Aydelot walk out of the room. And
in the silence that followed his going the company heard him through the
open window whistling some old patriotic air as he strode away in the June
moonlight with little Thaine trotting beside him.
"Shirley, where is Pryor tonight?" Cyrus Bennington broke the silence with
the query. "I couldn't get him to come; said he had no land for sale nor
money to invest," Jim replied.
"Then Jacobs got him at last. Fine friend to you fellers, that man Jacobs.
Easy to see what he wants. He ain't boomin' no place but Careyville,"
Champers snarled. "But the deep bend ain't the only bend in Grass River.
Or do you want to shove prosperity away when it comes right to your
door?"
Nobody wants to do that. Least of all did the Kansas settlers of the boom
days turn away from the promise of a fortune.
So the boom came to the Grass River Valley as other disasters had come
before it. Where a decade and a half ago Asher and Virginia Aydelot had
lived alone with each other and God, in the heart of the wide solitary
wilderness, the town of Cloverdale was staked out now over the prairie.
Stock in the new venture sold rapidly, and nobody ever knew how much clear
profit came to Champers & Co. from this venture. A big slice of the
Cloverdale ranch went into the staking of the new city, and prosperity
seemed wedded to Jim Shirley. He ceased farming and became a speculator
with dreams of millions in his brain. Other settlers followed his example
until the fever had infected every man in the community except Asher
Aydelot, who would not give up to it, and Pryor Gaines, who had nothing to
give up.
Everything fell out as advertised. The railroad grade swelled up like a
great welt across the land, seemingly in a day. Suburban additions
radiated for miles in every direction. Bonds were voted for light and
water and public buildings and improvements. Speculators rushed to invest
and unload their investments at a profit. The Grass River Farmers'
Company built the Grass River Creamery. And because it looked big and good
they built the Grass River Sugar Factory and the Grass River Elevator. But
while they were building their money into stone and machinery they forgot
to herd cattle to supply the creamery and to grow cane for the sugar
product and to sow and reap grain to be elevated.
Also, the Cloverdale Farmers' Company, made up mostly of the members of
the Grass River Farmers' Company, built the Cloverdale Hotel, and the
Cloverdale State Bank, and the Cloverdale Office Block. And the sad part
of it all was that mortgaged and doubly mortgaged farms and not the price
of crops had furnished the capital for the boom building.
It is an old story now, and none too interesting--the story of a boom
town, founded on prairie breezes and built out of fortune seekers'
dreams.
Meanwhile, Asher Aydelot, watching the sudden easy prosperity of his
neighbors, fought down the temptation to join them and resolutely strove
with the soil for its best yield. The drouth and hot winds had not
forgotten all their old tricks, and even the interest on his mortgage
could not be met promptly sometimes. Yet with the same old Aydelot
tenacity with which his father had held Cloverdale in Ohio away from the
old farm beside the National pike road, the son of this father held the
boundary of the Sunflower Ranch intact, nor yielded up one acre to be
platted into a suburban addition to the new Cloverdale in the Grass River
Valley in Kansas. And all the while the Aydelot windbreaks strengthened;
the Aydelot grove struck deeper root; the long corn furrows and the acres
on acres of broken wheat stubble of the Sunflower Ranch wooed the heavier
rainfall, narrowing the sand dunes and deepening the water courses.
For two brief years Cloverdale, in the Grass River Valley in Kansas, had a
name, even in the Eastern money markets. Speculation became madness; and
riotous commercialism had its little hour of strut and rave.
Then the bubble burst, and all that the boom had promised fell to
nothingness. Many farms were mortgaged, poor crops worked tribulation,
taxes began to eat up acres of weed-grown vacant town lots, Eastern money
was withdrawn to other markets, speculators departed, the strange
enthusiasm burned itself out, and the Wilderness came again to the Grass
River Valley. Not the old Wilderness of loneliness, and drouth, and
grasshoppers, and prairie fires that had dared the pioneer to conquest;
but the Prairie, waiting again the kingly hand on the plow handle, gave no
quarter to him whom the gilded boom had lured to shipwreck.
PART TWO
THE SON
Give me the land where miles of wheat
Ripple beneath the wind's light feet,
Where the green armies of the corn
Sway in the first sweet breath of morn;
Give me the large and liberal land
Of the open heart and the generous hand;
Under the wide-spaced Kansas sky
Let me live and let me die.
--Harry A. Kemp.