Part 24 (1/2)

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, n.o.body said it was impossible! n.o.body 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 c.o.c.ktail 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 gra.s.s.

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 pa.s.sengers 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 s.h.i.+mmering prairies, and, beyond the ditch, a single horseman looking curiously at the long cars and the faces strained against the gla.s.s of the windows.

'Say, you!' Cargan called, 'can you get an auto anywhere here?'

The figure looked at him impa.s.sively, then shook its dusty head.

'Or a team?'

It shook its head again.