"See here, Lem, you goin" to blab this all over town?"
Remembering the graves he had dug for $5.00, the grave-digger began to enjoy Lutz"s anxiety.
"Can"t tell what I"ll do when I get a few drinks in me."
"You start somethin" and you"ll be sorry." Lutz"s tone was threatening.
"I"m naturally truthful; I aims to stick strictly to facts if I does talk."
"Facts don"t cut any ice in a libel suit," replied the undertaker significantly.
Libel suit! That sounded like the law and the grave-digger had a poor man"s fear of the law. There was less a.s.surance in his voice when he a.s.serted--
"No man don"t own me."
"I don"t want to see you get in trouble, Lem, and I"m tellin" you for your own good that you better keep your trap shut on this. Who"d believe you if you"d tell any such story? You couldn"t prove anything with the mayor and town officer against you if it was anything likely to get out and hurt the town. Who of Lamb and Harpe"s friends that see them pikin"
off to church every Sunday, singin" their sa"ms and the first at the altar of a Communion Sunday, who, I say, would believe us if we"d tell what we knew about that hospital and the whole lot more that we suspect?
They could bluff you out because you haven"t got the money it would take to prove you"re right. Come back here and behave yourself and I"ll try and get you that $10."
"If I wasn"t a family man----" mumbled the grave-digger.
"But you are, and it"s no use bein" squeamish over somethin" that"s none of your business. This is your bread and b.u.t.ter."
It was the argument which has tied men"s tongues since the world began and it never grows less effective. The shovel dropped from the grave-digger"s shoulder.
"Hop in here and help me roll him back."
The grave-digger reluctantly obeyed.
"This looks fierce to me." He wiped the cold perspiration from his forehead.
"Take a rock and hammer in them shingle-nails and forget it!"
When Dan Treu returned from his business trip to the County seat the undertaker met him smilingly.
"I made a fine show for the money, Dan; you"d have been pleased.
Everything was plain but good and went off without a slip. I handled him as I promised--like he was my own."
The few in Crowheart who heard the story laughed openly at the statement which Giovanni Pelezzo made when he returned to camp one day and declared that while seated in the doorway of the operating room of the hospital he had turned in time to see Dr. Harpe take five dollars and some small change from the pocket of his cousin Antonio Pelezzo, whom she had etherized for a minor operation.
Although Antonio turned his empty pockets inside out to verify Giovanni"s stoutly reiterated a.s.sertion, the camp ridiculed their story and none laughed more heartily at the absurdity of the tale than Dr.
Harpe herself. When she declared that it was only one ill.u.s.tration of the lengths to which ignorant and suspicious foreigners would go, her listeners agreed that she must indeed have much with which to contend in practising her profession among such a cla.s.s of people as were employed upon the project.
The only person who did not laugh, beside the countrymen of the two Italians, was Dan Treu. He made no comment when he heard the tale, but he sat for a long time on the corner of the White Elephant"s billiard table, holding a cigarette which he forgot to smoke.
XXI
TURNING A CORNER
Andy P. Symes was much occupied with his own thoughts, he was not sleeping well and all food tasted much alike, while the adulation of his fellow-townsmen did not afford him the usual pleasure. These symptoms are most frequently a.s.sociated with lack of funds, and in this respect Mr. Symes"s case was not a peculiar one, the fact being that the total of the month"s payroll exceeded the amount in the treasury--with no relief in sight--interest in the great Symes Irrigation Project having seemed suddenly to lag in financial circles.
"Maybe I imagine it," Mudge, the promoter, had written, "but it looks to me as though Capital was giving us the frosty mitt. They won"t even listen. I can"t raise a dollar among the stockholders or sell a bond.
Could anybody have been knocking the proposition?"
Symes had written back--
"Ridiculous! Who would knock? I have no enemies of sufficient importance to hurt me, and particularly back there. Do your utmost, for the situation is growing critical here--desperate, in fact."
And desperate was the word when Symes contemplated going into his own pocket for money to make up the deficit--money which he had told himself he would salt away against that rainy day with which he had become all too familiar.
Symes"s private bank account had grown to quite a respectable sum since that memorable morning when he had received word that his balance was in the red. If he was given a confidential discount upon machinery for which he charged the company full price, was he not ent.i.tled to the difference? If he received a modest revenue from his manipulation of the commissary, and the hospital contract contributed its mite, was it not all in the game? Wasn"t it done every day by men in similar positions and as honest as himself? It was legitimate enough, certainly, and, if he did not mention it, it was because it was his own affair.
The longer and harder Symes walked the floor the more he realized that payday must be met. Labor was not an account which could wait. Nothing would so arouse suspicion and hurt his credit as a dilatory payday.
Local merchants would come down upon him like a thousand of brick for the settlement of the large accounts which at the present moment they were rather proud of his owing.
The impression was general that the affairs of the Symes Irrigation Company were entirely satisfactory, and Symes"s credit had only been limited by the local merchants" own credit.
Heretofore the treasury had been replenished through the activities of Mudge, but it was now disturbingly low and payday was close, while instead of the expected check from the promoter came his disquieting letter.
"Mudge is losin" his grip; he"s gettin" timid," Symes thought irritably.
"I may have to go back myself and raise the wind." His success with J.
Collins Prescott had given him added confidence in his abilities along this line.
The estate which Prescott represented were now the largest bondholders and at the time of the purchase Symes had chortled--
"If we can just get this crowd in deep enough they won"t dare lay down if we get in a hole. They"ve got to see the proposition through to save themselves."
"Yes," Mudge had agreed doubtfully, "but you gotta be careful." And added in the tone of a specialist in the delicate art of handling capital: "You can"t force or crowd "em, for once they get their necks bowed they"d sooner drop their pile than give an inch."
The question which Symes was now trying to decide was whether it was better to meet payday with his own money and trust Mudge to raise sufficient to reimburse him and meet the next payday or to bare the situation to the stock and bondholders and make an imperative demand for funds.
In the end Symes"s own money met the payroll, and the sensation of checking it out was much like parting with his heart"s blood. Though it was a relief to feel that his credit was still good and that he could continue to shine in the community for another month as its one large, luminous star, it also brought the cold perspiration out on him when he woke up in the night and remembered where this n.o.ble act had placed him.
He was worse than penniless if Mudge could not raise more money, but this he refused to believe a possibility.
In the days which followed, the circles deepened beneath his eyes, his high color faded and Mudge"s laconic messages "Nothing doing" were not calculated to restore it. As the time shortened toward another payday there were moments when Symes felt that his overtaxed nerves nearly had reached their limit. There was no rest or solace for him in his home, for when Augusta was not away with Dr. Harpe the latter was there to remind him of the skeleton jangling in his closet. He came and went beneath the cold eyes of the one and the half-contemptuous glances of the other, like, as he told himself, a necessary but objectionable boarder.
He no longer found diversion in his nightly game of "slough" in the card room of the Terriberry House, for they became only occasions to remind him that he owed his fellow-players more than he could ever hope to pay if Mudge did not dispose of more bonds quickly or the stockholders did not "come through," as he phrased it. He knew fairly well the financial resources of those whom he had favored with his liberal patronage and realized that they were doomed to go down with him to that limbo provided for the over-sanguine and the over-trusting.
At last the black day came when the treasury could not meet the smallest bills. Delay was no longer possible. He must play his last card. An imperative call must be made upon the stockholders and Symes telegraphed Mudge to this effect.
Symes dreaded the reply, yet he tried to bolster his courage with the argument which had seemed so potent at the time he used it, namely, that they were all in too deep to refuse aid at this crisis. Symes imagined that he could almost see himself growing old in the hours of suspense which followed the sending of the telegram.
Symes"s hand shook noticeably when he took the yellow sheet from the operator who delivered it in person. The message read: