This was not the only rivalry between the two young men. Her name was
Annie Cool, and she was some four years younger than either. They became
aware of her the year after her graduation from high school, when she
let down her skirts and put up her prettily luxuriant hair and ceased to
be “that Cool kid” in their eyes. There is a wide gulf between twelve
and sixteen; there is even a gulf between sixteen and twenty. But when
the signs are right, there is no gulf at all between, say, eighteen and
twenty-two.
Annie was eighteen and they were twenty-two. Presently she was nineteen
and they were twenty-three, and a little after that she was twenty and
they were twenty-four.
By this time each of the young men was conscious of much more than a
pleasantly intense delight in Annie Cool’s companionship. Will Matthews
was always somewhat more mature than Homer Dean; he took Annie more
seriously. He wooed her gently, with kindliness and much persistence;
and Homer wooed her laughingly, with raillery and the rough teasing that
goes with youth. There were times when she liked to be with Will; there
were other times when she liked to be with Homer, but most of the time
she liked to be with both of them, and said so. Other young men of the
community knew the uselessness of intrusion on their intimacy.
It had not come to the point of marriage talk, for Will and Homer were
getting only a matter of fifteen dollars weekly wage, and even in those
days fifteen dollars a week was not considered a competence. But Jasper
never paid his bookkeepers more. A salesman, now, was another matter;
beside those of a bookkeeper, his wages were munificent. Enough, that is
to say, for marrying.
In the fall of the year, when they were twenty-four and Annie Cool was
twenty, Steve Randall was killed in a train wreck. Steve was a salesman
in the southern territory, and Old Jasper was accustomed to fill
vacancies in his selling force from the men who worked upon his books.
Both Will and Homer were in line for the job. For three days, till after
Steve’s funeral, everyone ignored this fact; then a certain atmosphere
of expectancy began to develop in the office. Old Jasper was in bed at
home with a shaking cold, but on the fourth day word came that next
morning would see him at the office. Everyone knew his choice would be
either Homer or Will.
On their way home together after work that day these two met Charlie
Hopkins, the old man’s son; and Charlie stopped, smiling like a bearer
of good news. “I’ve just come from father,” he told them, and he added:
“Homer, you’ve got to congratulate Will this time.”
He shook Will by the hand, and Homer said:
“You’re going to get it, Will. Good for you. I sure am glad!”
Will looked at the other, and there was a faint mist in his eyes. “I
know you are, Homer,” he said. “I’d have been just as glad for you.”
Nevertheless, both knew that this moment must always mark the parting of
their ways. Thus far they had gone shoulder to shoulder; hereafter one
would lead. Also, both thought of Annie Cool.