I
Six hours on the train had nearly exhausted Joseph Cargan. He had read
all the available magazines, looked up his connections twice in the
railway guide, and even gazed for an hour out of the window. But there
were only woods and farms to be seen, scarcely a bill-board, and no
automobiles. He dropped his cigar wearily into the spittoon by his chair
in the club car and relapsed into lethargy. With dull iteration he ran
over the plans for the deal in prairie land that he hoped to put through
to-morrow, and guessed lazily at whether $6000 would purchase the tract
of which they had written him. He thought of his wife, and hoped that
his telegram would be telephoned over to the Runkles' so that she might
meet him at the station with the clean shirt he had asked for.
Afterwards he cut his nails, yawned loudly, and was just going to sleep
when they stopped at Joline and a boy came in with papers.
Cargan turned first, as usual, to the stock-market reports. There were
only two items of interest since he had left the tape. Montana Pacific
had gone off a little more. But 200 shares of Benningham Common had sold
at 17, a drop of ten points! His eye caught an explanatory note: the
dividend on the preferred had been cut; the surplus was heavily reduced.
His mind, searching rapidly over their business, fixed upon two marginal
accounts--Jim Smith's and Waldron's. In each case the collateral
deposited had already been insufficient. Drawing out his note-book he
swiftly figured. 'That old gambler Smith's always on the edge,' he
reflected. 'We can hold him a little longer. Gotta sell Waldron out.
Must have made a thousand dollars out of that account first and last.
Too bad.' A momentary sense of Waldron's calamity swept over him, but
quickly evaporated. 'Business is business,' he thought, and remembered,
with a little angry satisfaction, Anita Waldron's coming-out dance and
how the Runkles, who were invited, kept talking about it all winter.
'Old Waldron won't be so darn particular next year.'
As the train pulled into his home town he hurried out upon the station
platform, and saw with pride and pleasure that his wife was just
stepping out of the Runkles' motor. Looking about to see who might be
there to note the company she was keeping, his eye fell on a tall and
stooping gentleman with a trimmed beard and eyeglasses, who was
searching with weary eyes the train windows; but even while he frowned
at the recognition, his wife had seized him by the shoulder, caroling,
'Hello, Jimmy. Give me a kiss, dear, and take your old shirt.' She was a
graceful woman, stiffened by an obvious corset, and faintly powdered. A
long yellow feather dangled from her orange hat, big pearls were set in
her ears, and her shoe-buckles glittered as she walked.
He kissed her admiringly. 'Say, Martha, you look great,' he chuckled. 'I
hate to have to go right on. You tell the kids I'll bring 'em something
when I get back.'
The train was starting; indeed he had just time to dash up the steps of
his car. 'Good-bye, dear,' she caroled. 'Good-bye, dee-ar,' hummed the
brakeman, and slammed down the swinging floor of the vestibule. Cargan
was already balancing himself along the corridor of the club car. A
lurch of the train swung him heavily out among the chairs; to save
himself he caught a shoulder and dropped into a seat. His neighbor had
but just sat down. It was Waldron.
They shook hands as if nothing were in the air, and then compared
watches to see if the train were on time. This done, Waldron took off
his glasses, swung them on their black cord, and began to polish them
nervously, blinking with short-sighted eyes into the space that hurried
past the car windows. Cargan offered him a cigar, but he put it aside
quickly.
'No, thank you; no, thank you--Well--they cut the dividend.' He looked
at Cargan with a wan smile. 'What'll I do, Cargan? They told me I'd find
you on the train, and I thought I'd ask your advice.'
Cargan was relieved. 'Sell, Mr. Waldron,' he answered earnestly, 'sell
right off. That Brogan crowd's runnin' the company now, and they're no
good, sell quick.'
Waldron looked at him in doubt. 'How much do I lose?' he asked feebly.
''Bout six thousand'--against his will Cargan made the tone apologetic.
'Say, put up only five thousand more collateral and we'll carry you till
better luck.'
The old man blinked rapidly, then conquered his pride. With punctilious
care he unbuttoned his gray cutaway, took out a wallet from under the
button of the Society of Colonial Wars, drew forth a sheet of note
paper, and with a pencil inscribed a broad O. 'There's my collateral,
Mr. Cargan,' he said whimsically.
He was so helpless, and so elegant in his helplessness, that the bully
awoke in Cargan. With an effort he broke through the nervous deference
with which Waldron always inspired him and spoke roughly:--
'We don't do business without either collateral or cash, Waldron.'
The gentleman put his wallet back hurriedly as if some one had laughed
at it, and cast a quick, hurt look at his broker.
'You haven't been thinking of selling me out--after all the business
I've given you?'
Cargan nodded.
Incredulity, horror, resolve, passed over Waldron's face. 'You cannot!
It's impossible!' he said firmly.
The assertion in his tone was irritating. 'What's goin' to stop us?'
Cargan asked coolly; shoved his hands into his pockets, and puffed
clouds from his cigar.
Different worlds of imagination revolved in the two men's minds.
Theophilus Waldron thought of the children, and of his father the
governor, and of the family pride. Sudden poverty was as bad as
disgrace. 'I didn't mean it that way,' he answered hurriedly. 'I'm in
temporary difficulties. My house is mortgaged. I've borrowed money from
my wife--and other places.'--He was too proud to add, 'This is
confidential.'--'My boy's just entered college, my girl's just come out.
It isn't just the money--' a gush of emotion reddened his face--'You've
got to pull me through, Cargan. It's impossible; it's out of the
question for me to break now!'
But Cargan was remembering how he lost his job in the department store
and couldn't pay the rent. When he was kicked out, nobody said it was
impossible! Nobody said it was impossible when they went into the top of
a tenement! The contrast made him bitter; but it was the thought that he
had never felt it to be impossible, the inescapable inferiority always
forced upon him in the presence of Waldron, which roused his temper.
'Business is business, Mr. Waldron,' he said curtly. 'Ab-so-lute-ly, we
won't take the risk.'
They were rattling through coal-sheds and grain-elevators at the edge
of a town. Waldron got up stiffly and carefully brushed the cinders from
his coat.
'This is Bloomfield, I think,' he said coldly. 'I'm meeting my family
here. Mr. Cargan, there are considerations above business.' His voice
failed a little. 'This is a matter of life and death.'
Cargan had heard that bluff before. 'What d' you mean?' he grunted.
Mr. Waldron was staring fixedly out of the window. 'I mean,' he
faltered, 'that I may not be able to stand up under it.' And then his
voice resumed its desperate certainty. 'I mean, sir, that what you
propose is impossible. I mean that ab-so-lute-ly you cannot sell me
out.'
He bowed and felt his way down the corridor.
'I can't, can't I!' Cargan flung after him; then jerked a sheet from the
telegraph pad in the rack beside him and wrote: 'Sell out Waldron at
noon to-morrow unless 5000 collateral.' 'Something'll drop for you, old
boy,' he growled, addressed the telegram to his partner, and gave it to
the porter.
Outside, Cargan heard a burst of merry voices and saw Waldron hurried
away by two laughing girls to an automobile waiting with a trunk
strapped behind it. Mrs. Waldron followed. She was a stiff woman, a
little faded, quietly dressed. Her face was troubled, and when they
reached the motor, she caught her husband's elbow gently as if to ask
him something, but he merely nodded and turned her glance toward
Cargan's window. She bowed and smiled very sweetly in his direction, and
Cargan smiled sourly in return. Then the children hustled the old folks
into the tonneau and they were off, just as the train started.
Cargan felt hardly used. 'A man's got to look out for himself,' he
thought angrily. 'Business is business--that's the thing for him to
remember. "It's impossible!" Nevertheless, in self-defense he began to
calculate what it might have cost to carry the account, until the
appalling magnitude of the risk shut off the discussion. 'The darned old
self-confident aristocrat!' he murmured, working himself up into a fury.
'Thinks he can bluff me, but he'll find out what's impossible, believe
_me_!' Then he dispelled his irritation by a cocktail and hurried into
the diner.
He snored in his berth while the train ran out farther and farther upon
the great Kansas plain; slept while signs of culture disappeared one by
one, and arose in the midst of an endless, unfamiliar world of grass.
When he sat down in the diner for his morning meal, the great wheel of
the horizon rimmed round his little train without a notch on the perfect
circle; over night the outer world had changed, but he was absorbed in
fitting his choices into a sixty-cent breakfast.
The train stopped quickly and firmly, and lay dead upon the prairie.
'Eccentrics or hot-box,' said the man who jumped off the step beside
him. 'Nothing much else goes wrong with an engine nowadays. What is it,
Bill?'
And the conductor, looking about him to see that no more passengers were
within earshot, answered, 'Eccentrics--two hours anyway.'
Cargan flung his cigarette on the ground. 'I'll miss my connection at
Hay Junction!' he protested. 'I've gotta be in Hamden this afternoon.'
'Walk then,' said the conductor stolidly. 'It's only ten miles from here
straight across.'
There was no house in sight, no road, nothing but the dead train, the
new land of endless shimmering prairies, and, beyond the ditch, a single
horseman looking curiously at the long cars and the faces strained
against the glass of the windows.
'Say, you!' Cargan called, 'can you get an auto anywhere here?'
The figure looked at him impassively, then shook its dusty head.
'Or a team?'
It shook its head again.
'Or a--horse?' Cargan hesitated. He had never ridden a horse.
A sudden gleaming idea shot across the man's solemn features. He slid
off his pony and led him nearer the ditch.
'Say'--he suddenly became voluble,--'you said you wanted to get to
Hamden. Well, if you'll make it five plunks, and give me your ticket,
you can take this horse, an' I'll go round by train. Say--do you want
to?'
Cargan was tempted. All you had to do was to stick on.
'What'll I do with my suit-case?'
'Gimme it to take for you. I guess it ain't worth more'n my horse.'