Part 1 (1/2)

The Main Chance.

by Meredith Nicholson.

CHAPTER I

A NEW MAN IN TOWN

”Well, sir, they say I'm crooked!”

William Porter tipped back his swivel chair and placidly puffed a cigar as he watched the effect of this declaration on the young man who sat talking to him.

”That's said of every successful man nowadays, isn't it?” asked John Saxton.

The president of the Clarkson National Bank ignored the question and rolled his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, as he waited for his words to make their full impression upon his visitor.

”They say I'm crooked,” he repeated, with a narrowing of the eyes, ”but they don't say it very loud!”

Porter kicked his heels together gently and watched his visitor with eyes in which there was no trace of humor; but Saxton saw that he was expected to laugh.

”No, sir;” the banker continued, ”they don't say it very loud, and I guess they don't any of them want to have to prove it. I'm afraid those Boston friends of yours have given us up as a bad lot,” he went on, waiving the matter of his personal rect.i.tude and returning to the affairs of his visitor; ”and they've sent you out here to get their money, and I don't blame them. Well, sir; that money's got to come out in time, but it's going to take time and money to get it.”

”I believe they sent me because I had plenty of time,” said Saxton, smiling.

”Well, we want to help you win out,” returned Porter. ”And now what can I do to start you off?” he asked briskly. ”Have you got a place to stay?

Well, sir, I warn you solemnly against the hotels in this town; but we've got a fairly decent club up here, and you'd better stay there till you get acquainted. Been to breakfast? Breakfast on the train? That's good. Just look over the papers till I get rid of these letters and I'll be free.”

Porter turned to his desk and replaced the eye-gla.s.ses which he had dropped while talking. There was an air of great alertness in his small, lean figure as he pushed b.u.t.tons to summon various members of the clerical force and rapidly dictated terse telegrams and letters to a stenographer. He continued to smoke, and he s.h.i.+fted constantly the narrow-brimmed, red-banded straw hat that he wore above his shrewd face.

It was an agreeable face to see, of a type that is common wherever the North-Irish stock is found in America, and its characteristics were expressed in his firm, lean jaw and blue eyes, and his reddish hair and mustache, through which there were streaks of gray. He wore his hair short, but it was still thick, and he combed it with precision. His clothes fitted him; he wore a bright cravat, well tied, and his shoes were carefully polished. Saxton was impressed by the banker's perfect confidence and ease; it manifested itself in the way he tapped b.u.t.tons to call his subordinates, or turned to satisfy the importunities of the desk-telephone at his elbow.

John Saxton had been sent to Clarkson by the Neponset Trust Company of Boston to represent the interests of a group of clients who had made rash investments in several of the Trans-Missouri states. Foreclosure had, in many instances, resulted in the transfer to themselves of much town and ranch property which was, in the conditions existing in the early nineties, an exceedingly slow a.s.set. It was necessary that some one on the ground should care for these interests. The Clarkson National Bank had been exercising a general supervision, but, as one of the investors told his fellow sufferers in Boston, they should have an agent whom they could call home and abuse, and here was Saxton, a conscientious and steady fellow, who had some knowledge of the country, and who, moreover, needed something to do. Saxton's acquaintance with the West had been gained by a bitter experience of ranching in Wyoming.

A blizzard had destroyed his cattle, and the subsequent depression in land values in the neighborhood of his ranch had left him enc.u.mbered with a property for which there was no market. His friends had been correct in the a.s.sumption that he needed employment, and he was, moreover, glad of the chance to get away from home, where the impression was making headway that he had failed at something in the vague, non-interest-paying West. When, on his return from Wyoming, it became necessary for his former acquaintances to identify him to one another, they said, with varying degrees of kindness, that John had gone broke at ranching; and if they liked him particularly, they said it was too bad; if they had not known him well in his fortunate days, they mildly intimated that a fool and his money found quicker divorce at ranching than in any other way. Most of Saxton's friends and contemporaries had made good beginnings at home, and he felt, unnecessarily perhaps, that his failure made him a marked man among them.

”Now,” said Porter presently, scrutinizing a telegram carefully before signing it, ”I'll take you up to the office we've been keeping for your people, and show you what it looks like. Some of these things are run as corporations, you understand, and in our state corporations have to maintain a tangible residence.”

”So that the sheriff may find them more easily,” added Saxton.

”Well, that's no joke,” returned Porter, as they entered the elevator from the outer hall; ”but they don't necessarily have much office furniture to levy on.”

The room proved to be a small one at the top of the building. On the ground-gla.s.s door was inscribed ”The Interstate Irrigation Company.” The room contained a safe, a flat-top desk and a few chairs. Several maps hung on the wall, some of them railroad advertis.e.m.e.nts, and others were engineers' charts of ranch lands and irrigation ditches.

”It ain't pretty,” said Porter critically, ”but if you don't like it you can move when you get ready. The bank is your landlord, and we don't charge you much for it. You've doubtless got your inventory of stuff with you, and here in the safe you'll find the accounts of these companies, copies of public records relating to them, and so on.” As Porter talked he stood in the middle of the room with his hands in his pockets, and puffed at a cigar, throwing his head back in an effort to escape the smoke. He stood with one foot on a chair and pushed his hat away from his forehead as he continued reflectively: ”You're going up against a pretty tough proposition, young man. You'll hear a hard luck story wherever you go out here just now; people who owe your friends money will be mighty sorry they can't pay. Many of the ranch lands your people own will be worth something after a while. That Colorado irrigation scheme ought to pan out in time, and I believe it will; but you've got to nurse all these things. Make your princ.i.p.als let you alone. Those fellows get in a hurry at the wrong time,--that's my experience with Eastern investors. Tell them to go to Europe,--get rid of them for a while, and make them give you a chance to work out their money for them. They're not the only pebbles.” A slight smile seemed to creep over a small area about the banker's lips, but his cigar only partly revealed it. His eyes rarely betrayed him, and the monotonous drawl of his voice was without humorous intention.

”I'll send the combination of the safe up by the boy,” he said, moving toward the door, ”and you can get a bird's-eye view of the situation before lunch. Mr. Wheaton, our cas.h.i.+er, is away to-day, but he's familiar with these matters and will be glad to help you when he gets home. He'll be back to-night. When you get stuck call on us. And drop down about twelve thirty and go up to the club for lunch. Take it easy; you can't do it all in one day,” he added.

”I hope I shan't be a nuisance to you,” said the younger man. ”I'm going to fight it out on the best lines I know how,--if it takes several summers.”

”Well, it'll take them all right,” said Porter, sententiously.

Left to himself Saxton examined his new quarters, found a feather duster hanging in a corner and brushed the dirt from the scanty furniture. This done, he drew a pipe from his pocket, filled it from his tobacco pouch and sat down by the open window, through which the breeze came cool out of the great valley; and here he could see, far over the roofs and spires of the town, the bluffs that marked the broad bed of the tawny Missouri. He was not as buoyant as his last words to the banker implied.