Poor White: A Novel Page 6

  CHAPTER VI

  Steve Hunter decided that it was time something was done to wake up hisnative town. The call of the spring wind awoke something in him as inHugh. It came up from the south bringing rain followed by warm fairdays. Robins hopped about on the lawns before the houses on theresidence streets of Bidwell, and the air was again sweet with thepregnant sweetness of new-plowed ground. Like Hugh, Steve walked aboutalone through the dark, dimly lighted residence streets during thespring evenings, but he did not try awkwardly to leap over creeks inthe darkness or pull bushes out of the ground, nor did he waste his timedreaming of being physically young, clean-limbed and beautiful.

  Before the coming of his great achievements in the industrial field,Steve had not been highly regarded in his home town. He had been a noisyboastful youth and had been spoiled by his father. When he was twelveyears old what were called safety bicycles first came into use and fora long time he owned the only one in town. In the evening he rode it upand down Main Street, frightening the horses and arousing the envyof the town boys. He learned to ride without putting his hands on thehandle-bars and the other boys began to call him Smarty Hunter andlater, because he wore a stiff, white collar that folded down over hisshoulders, they gave him a girl's name. "Hello, Susan," they shouted,"don't fall and muss your clothes."

  In the spring that marked the beginning of his great industrialadventure, Steve was stirred by the soft spring winds into dreaming hisown kind of dreams. As he walked about through the streets, avoiding theother young men and women, he remembered Ernestine, the daughter of theBuffalo soap maker, and thought a great deal about the magnificence ofthe big stone house in which she lived with her father. His body achedfor her, but that was a matter he felt could be managed. How he couldachieve a financial position that would make it possible for him to askfor her hand was a more difficult problem. Since he had come back fromthe business college to live in his home town, he had secretly, and atthe cost of two new five dollar dresses, arranged a physical alliancewith a girl named Louise Trucker whose father was a farm laborer,and that left his mind free for other things. He intended to become amanufacturer, the first one in Bidwell, to make himself a leader in thenew movement that was sweeping over the country. He had thought outwhat he wanted to do and it only remained to find something for him tomanufacture to put his plans through. First of all he had selected withgreat care certain men he intended to ask to go in with him. There wasJohn Clark the banker, his own father, E. H. Hunter the town jeweler,Thomas Butterworth the rich farmer, and young Gordon Hart, who had a jobas assistant cashier in the bank. For a month he had been dropping hintsto these men of something mysterious and important about to happen. Withthe exception of his father who had infinite faith in the shrewdness andability of his son, the men he wanted to impress were only amused. Oneday Thomas Butterworth went into the bank and stood talking the matterover with John Clark. "The young squirt was always a Smart-Aleck anda blow-hard," he said. "What's he up to now? What's he nudging andwhispering about?"

  As he walked in the main street of Bidwell, Steve began to acquirethat air of superiority that later made him so respected and feared. Hehurried along with a peculiarly intense absorbed look in his eyes. Hesaw his fellow townsmen as through a haze, and sometimes did not seethem at all. As he went along he took papers from his pocket, readthem hurriedly, and then quickly put them away again. When he didspeak--perhaps to a man who had known him from boyhood--there was in hismanner something gracious to the edge of condescension. One morning inMarch he met Zebe Wilson the town shoemaker on the sidewalk before thepost-office. Steve stopped and smiled. "Well, good morning, Mr. Wilson,"he said, "and how is the quality of leather you are getting from thetanneries now?"

  Word regarding this strange salutation ran about among the merchantsand artisans. "What's he up to now?" they asked each other. "Mr. Wilson,indeed! Now what's wrong between that young squirt and Zebe Wilson?"

  In the afternoon, four clerks from the Main Street stores and Ed Hallthe carpenter's apprentice, who had a half day off because of rain,decided to investigate. One by one they went along Hamilton Streetto Zebe Wilson's shop and stepped inside to repeat Steve Hunter'ssalutation. "Well, good afternoon, Mr. Wilson," they said, "and how isthe quality of leather you are getting from the tanneries now?" Ed Hall,the last of the five who went into the shop to repeat the formal andpolite inquiry, barely escaped with his life. Zebe Wilson threw ashoemaker's hammer at him and it went through the glass in the upperpart of the shop door.

  Once when Tom Butterworth and John Clark the banker were talking of thenew air of importance he was assuming, and half indignantly speculatedon what he meant by his whispered suggestion of something significantabout to happen, Steve came along Main Street past the front door of thebank. John Clark called him in. The three men confronted each other andthe jeweler's son sensed the fact that the banker and the rich farmerwere amused by his pretensions. At once he proved himself to be whatall Bidwell later acknowledged him to be, a man who could handle menand affairs. Having at that time nothing to support his pretensions hedecided to put up a bluff. With a wave of his hand and an air of knowingjust what he was about, he led the two men into the back room of thebank and shut the door leading into the large room to which the generalpublic was admitted. "You would have thought he owned the place," JohnClark afterward said with a note of admiration in his voice to youngGordon Hart when he described what took place in the back room.

  Steve plunged at once into what he had to say to the two solid moneyedcitizens of his town. "Well, now, look here, you two," he beganearnestly. "I'm going to tell you something, but you got to keep still."He went to the window that looked out upon an alleyway and glanced aboutas though fearful of being overheard, then sat down in the chair usuallyoccupied by John Clark on the rare occasions when the directors of theBidwell bank held a meeting. Steve looked over the heads of the two menwho in spite of themselves were beginning to be impressed. "Well,"he began, "there is a fellow out at Pickleville. You have maybe heardthings said about him. He's telegraph operator out there. Perhaps youhave heard how he is always making drawings of parts of machines. Iguess everybody in town has been wondering what he's up to."

  Steve looked at the two men and then got nervously out of the chairand walked about the room. "That fellow is my man. I put him there," hedeclared. "I didn't want to tell any one yet."

  The two men nodded and Steve became lost in the notion created in hisfancy. It did not occur to him that what he had just said was untrue.He began to scold the two men. "Well, I suppose I'm on the wrong trackthere," he said. "My man has made an invention that will bring millionsin profits to those who get into it. In Cleveland and Buffalo I'malready in touch with big bankers. There's to be a big factory built,but you see yourself how it is, here I'm at home. I was raised as a boyhere."

  The excited young man plunged into an exposition of the spirit of thenew times. He grew bold and scolded the older men. "You know yourselfthat factories are springing up everywhere, in towns all over theState," he said. "Will Bidwell wake up? Will we have factories here? Youknow well enough we won't, and I know why. It's because a man like mewho was raised here has to go to a city to get money to back his plans.If I talked to you fellows you would laugh at me. In a few years I mightmake you more money than you have made in your whole lives, but what'sthe use talking? I'm Steve Hunter; you knew me when I was a kid. You'dlaugh. What's the use my trying to tell you fellows my plans?"

  Steve turned as though to go out of the room, but Tom Butterworth tookhold of his arm and led him back to a chair. "Now, you tell us whatyou're up to," he demanded. In turn he grew indignant. "If you've gotsomething to manufacture you can get backing here as well as any place,"he said. He became convinced that the jeweler's son was telling thetruth. It did not occur to him that a Bidwell young man would dare lieto such solid men as John Clark and himself. "You let them city bankersalone," he said emphatically. "You tell us your story. What you got totell?"

  In the silent
little room the three men stared at each other. TomButterworth and John Clark in their turn began to have dreams. Theyremembered the tales they had heard of vast fortunes made quickly by menwho owned new and valuable inventions. The land was at that time full ofsuch tales. They were blown about on every wind. Quickly they realizedthat they had made a mistake in their attitude toward Steve, and wereanxious to win his regard. They had called him into the bank to bullyhim and to laugh at him. Now they were sorry. As for Steve, he onlywanted to get away--to get by himself and think. An injured look creptover his face. "Well," he said, "I thought I'd give Bidwell a chance.There are three or four men here. I have spoken to all of you anddropped a hint of something in the wind, but I'm not ready to be verydefinite yet."

  Seeing the new look of respect in the eyes of the two men Stevebecame bold. "I was going to call a meeting when I was ready," he saidpompously. "You two do what I've been doing. You keep your mouths shut.Don't go near that telegraph operator and don't talk to a soul. If youmean business I'll give you a chance to make barrels of money, more'nyou ever dreamed of, but don't be in a hurry." He took a bundle ofletters out of his inside coat pocket, and beat with them on the edgeof the table that occupied the center of the room. Another bold thoughtcame into his mind.

  "I've got letters here offering me big money to take my factory eitherto Cleveland or Buffalo," he declared emphatically. "It isn't moneythat's hard to get. I can tell you men that. What a man wants in hishome town is respect. He don't want to be looked on as a fool because hetries to do something to rise in the world."

  * * * * *

  Steve walked boldly out of the bank and into Main Street. When he hadgot out of the presence of the two men he was frightened. "Well, I'vedone it. I've made a fool of myself," he muttered aloud. In the bank hehad said that Hugh McVey the telegraph operator was his man, that he hadbrought the fellow to Bidwell. What a fool he had been. In his anxietyto impress the two older men he had told a story, the falsehood of whichcould be discovered in a few minutes. Why had he not kept his dignityand waited? There had been no occasion for being so definite. He hadgone too far, had been carried away. To be sure he had told the two mennot to go near the telegraph operator, but that would no doubt but serveto arouse their suspicions of the thinness of his story. They would talkthe matter over and start an investigation of their own. Then they wouldfind out he had lied. He imagined the two men as already engaged in awhispered conversation regarding the probability of his tale. Like mostshrewd men he had an exalted notion regarding the shrewdness of others.He walked a little away from the bank and then turned to look back. Ashiver ran over his body. Into his mind came the sickening fear that thetelegraph operator at Pickleville was not an inventor at all. The townwas full of tales, and in the bank he had taken advantage of that factto make an impression; but what proof had he? No one had seen one of theinventions supposed to have been worked out by the mysteriousstranger from Missouri. There had after all been nothing but whisperedsuspicions, old wives' tales, fables invented by men who had nothing todo but loaf in the drug-store and make up stories.

  The thought that Hugh McVey might not be an inventor overpowered him andhe put it quickly aside. He had something more immediate to think about.The story of the bluff he had just made in the bank would be found outand the whole town would rock with laughter at his expense. The youngmen of the town did not like him. They would roll the story over ontheir tongues. Ribald old fellows who had nothing else to do would takeup the story with joy and would elaborate it. Fellows like the cabbagefarmer, Ezra French, who had a talent for saying cutting things wouldexercise it. They would make up imaginary inventions, grotesque, absurdinventions. Then they would get young fellows to come to him and proposethat he take them up, promote them, and make every one rich. Men wouldshout jokes at him as he went along Main Street. His dignity would begone forever. He would be made a fool of by the very school boys ashe had been in his youth when he bought the bicycle and rode it aboutbefore the eyes of other boys in the evenings.

  Steve hurried out of Main Street and went over the bridge that crossedthe river into Turner's Pike. He did not know what he intended to do,but felt there was much at stake and that he would have to do somethingat once. It was a warm, cloudy day and the road that led to Picklevillewas muddy. During the night before it had rained and more rain waspromised. The path beside the road was slippery, and so absorbed was hethat as he plunged along, his feet slipped out from under him and hesat down in a small pool of water. A farmer driving past along the roadturned to laugh at him. "You go to hell," Steve shouted. "You just mindyour own business and go to hell."

  The distracted young man tried to walk sedately along the path. The longgrass that grew beside the path wet his shoes, and his hands were wetand muddy. Farmers turned on their wagon seats to stare at him. For someobscure reason he could not himself understand, he was terribly afraidto face Hugh McVey. In the bank he had been in the presence of men whowere trying to get the best of him, to make a fool of him, to have funat his expense. He had felt that and had resented it. The knowledge hadgiven him a certain kind of boldness; it had enabled his mind to make upthe story of the inventor secretly employed at his own expense and thecity bankers anxious to furnish him capital. Although he was terriblyafraid of discovery, he felt a little glow of pride at the thought ofthe boldness with which he had taken the letters out of his pocket andhad challenged the two men to call his bluff.

  Steve, however, felt there was something different about the man inthe telegraph office in Pickleville. He had been in town for nearlytwo years and no one knew anything about him. His silence might beindicative of anything. He was afraid the tall silent Missourian mightdecide to have nothing to do with him, and pictured himself as beingbrushed rudely aside, being told to mind his own business.

  Steve knew instinctively how to handle business men. One simply createdthe notion of money to be made without effort. He had done that to thetwo men in the bank and it had worked. After all he had succeeded inmaking them respect him. He had handled the situation. He wasn't sucha fool at that kind of a thing. The other thing he had to face might bevery different. Perhaps after all Hugh McVey was a big inventor, aman with a powerful creative mind. It was possible he had been sentto Bidwell by a big business man of some city. Big business men didstrange, mysterious things; they put wires out in all directions,controlled a thousand little avenues for the creation of wealth.

  Just starting out on his own career as a man of affairs, Steve had anoverpowering respect for what he thought of as the subtlety of men ofaffairs. With all the other American youths of his generation he hadbeen swept off his feet by the propaganda that then went on and isstill going on, and that is meant to create the illusion of greatnessin connection with the ownership of money. He did not then know and, inspite of his own later success and his own later use of the machineryby which illusion is created, he never found out that in an industrialworld reputations for greatness of mind are made as a Detroitmanufacturer would make automobiles. He did not know that men areemployed to bring up the name of a politician so that he may be calleda statesman, as a new brand of breakfast food that it may be sold; thatmost modern great men are mere illusions sprung out of a national hungerfor greatness. Some day a wise man, one who has not read too many booksbut who has gone about among men, will discover and set forth a veryinteresting thing about America. The land is vast and there is anational hunger for vastness in individuals. One wants an Illinois-sizedman for Illinois, an Ohio-sized man for Ohio, and a Texas-sized man forTexas.

  To be sure, Steve Hunter had no notion of all this. He never did get anotion of it. The men he had already begun to think of as great and totry to imitate were like the strange and gigantic protuberances thatsometimes grow on the side of unhealthy trees, but he did not know it.He did not know that throughout the country, even in that early day, asystem was being built up to create the myth of greatness. At the seatof the American Government at Washington, hordes of som
ewhat cleverand altogether unhealthy young men were already being employed for thepurpose. In a sweeter age many of these young men might have becomeartists, but they had not been strong enough to stand against thegrowing strength of dollars. They had become instead newspapercorrespondents and secretaries to politicians. All day and every daythey used their minds and their talents as writers in the making ofpuffs and the creating of myths concerning the men by whom they wereemployed. They were like the trained sheep that are used at greatslaughter-houses to lead other sheep into the killing pens. Havingbefouled their own minds for hire, they made their living by befoulingthe minds of others. Already they had found out that no great clevernesswas required for the work they had to do. What was required was constantrepetition. It was only necessary to say over and over that the manby whom they were employed was a great man. No proof had to be broughtforward to substantiate the claims they made; no great deeds had tobe done by the men who were thus made great, as brands of crackers orbreakfast food are made salable. Stupid and prolonged and insistentrepetition was what was necessary.

  As the politicians of the industrial age have created a myth aboutthemselves, so also have the owners of dollars, the big bankers, therailroad manipulators, the promoters of industrial enterprise. Theimpulse to do so is partly sprung from shrewdness but for the most partit is due to a hunger within to be of some real moment in the world.Knowing that the talent that had made them rich is but a secondarytalent, and being a little worried about the matter, they employ men toglorify it. Having employed a man for the purpose, they are themselveschildren enough to believe the myth they have paid money to havecreated. Every rich man in the country unconsciously hates his pressagent.

  Although he had never read a book, Steve was a constant reader of thenewspapers and had been deeply impressed by the stories he had readregarding the shrewdness and ability of the American captains ofindustry. To him they were supermen and he would have crawled on hisknees before a Gould or a Cal Price--the commanding figures amongmoneyed men of that day. As he went down along Turner's Pike that daywhen industry was born in Bidwell, he thought of these men and of lesserrich men of Cleveland and Buffalo, and was afraid that in approachingHugh he might be coming into competition with one of these men. As hehurried along under the gray sky, he however realized that the timefor action had come and that he must at once put the plans that he hadformed in his mind to the test of practicability; that he must at oncesee Hugh McVey, find out if he really did have an invention that couldbe manufactured, and if he did try to secure some kind of rights ofownership over it. "If I do not act at once, either Tom Butterworth orJohn Clark will get in ahead of me," he thought. He knew they were bothshrewd capable men. Had they not become well-to-do? Even during the talkin the bank, when they had seemed to be impressed by his words, theymight well have been making plans to get the better of him. They wouldact, but he must act first.

  Steve hadn't the courage of the lie he had told. He did not haveimagination enough to understand how powerful a thing is a lie.He walked quickly along until he came to the Wheeling Station atPickleville, and then, not having the courage to confront Hugh at once,went past the station and crept in behind the deserted pickle factorythat stood across the tracks. Through a broken window at the back heclimbed, and crept like a thief across the earth floor until he cameto a window that looked out upon the station. A freight train rumbledslowly past and a farmer came to the station to get a load of goodsthat had arrived by freight. George Pike came running from his house toattend to the wants of the farmer. He went back to his house and Stevewas left alone in the presence of the man on whom he felt all of hisfuture depended. He was as excited as a village girl in the presence ofa lover. Through the windows of the telegraph office he could seeHugh seated at a desk with a book before him. The presence of the bookfrightened him. He decided that the mysterious Missourian must be somestrange sort of intellectual giant. He was sure that one who could sitquietly reading hour after hour in such a lonely isolated place couldbe of no ordinary clay. As he stood in the deep shadows inside theold building and stared at the man he was trying to find courage toapproach, a citizen of Bidwell named Dick Spearsman came to the stationand going inside, talked to the telegraph operator. Steve trembled withanxiety. The man who had come to the station was an insurance agent whoalso owned a small berry farm at the edge of town. He had a son who hadgone west to take up land in the state of Kansas, and the father thoughtof visiting him. He came to the station to make inquiry regarding therailroad fare, but when Steve saw him talking to Hugh, the thought cameinto his mind that John Clark or Thomas Butterworth might have sent himto the station to make an investigation of the truth of the statementshe had made in the bank. "It would be like them to do it that way," hemuttered to himself. "They wouldn't come themselves. They would sendsome one they thought I wouldn't suspect. They would play safe, damn'em."

  Trembling with fear, Steve walked up and down in the empty factory.Cobwebs hanging down brushed against his face and he jumped aside asthough a hand had reached out of the darkness to touch him. In thecorners of the old building shadows lurked and distorted thoughtsbegan to come into his head. He rolled and lighted a cigarette and thenremembered that the flare of the match could probably be seen from thestation. He cursed himself for his carelessness. Throwing the cigaretteon the earth floor he ground it under his heel. When at last DickSpearsman had disappeared up the road that led to Bidwell and he cameout of the old factory and got again into Turner's Pike, he felt that hewas in no shape to talk of business but nevertheless must act at once.In front of the factory he stopped in the road and tried to wipe the mudoff the seat of his trousers with a handkerchief. Then he went to thecreek and washed his soiled hands. With wet hands he arranged his tieand straightened the collar of his coat. He had an air of one aboutto ask a woman to become his wife. Striving to look as important anddignified as possible, he went along the station platform and into thetelegraph office to confront Hugh and to find out at once and finallywhat fate the gods had in store for him.

  * * * * *

  It no doubt contributed to Steve's happiness in after life, in thedays when he was growing rich, and later when he reached out for publichonors, contributed to campaign funds, and even in secret dreamed ofgetting into the United States Senate or being Governor of his state,that he never knew how badly he overreached himself that day in hisyouth when he made his first business deal with Hugh at the WheelingStation at Pickleville. Later Hugh's interest in the Steven Hunterindustrial enterprises was taken care of by a man who was as shrewd asSteve himself. Tom Butterworth, who had made money and knew how to makeand handle money, managed such things for the inventor, and Steve'schance was gone forever.

  That is, however, a part of the story of the development of the townof Bidwell and a story that Steve never understood. When he overreachedhimself that day he did not know what he had done. He made a deal withHugh and was happy to escape the predicament he thought he had gothimself into when he talked too much to the two men in the bank.

  Although Steve's father had always a great faith in his son's shrewdnessand when he talked to other men represented him as a peculiarly capableand unappreciated man, the two did not in private get on well. In theHunter household they quarreled and snarled at each other. Steve'smother had died when he was a small boy and his one sister, two yearsolder than himself, kept herself always in the house and seldom appearedon the streets. She was a semi-invalid. Some obscure nervous disease hadtwisted her body out of shape, and her face twitched incessantly.One morning in the barn back of the Hunter house Steve, then a lad offourteen, was oiling his bicycle when his sister appeared and stoodwatching him. A small wrench lay on the ground and she picked it up.Suddenly and without warning she began to beat him on the head. He wascompelled to knock her down in order to tear the wrench out of her hand.After the incident she was ill in bed for a month.

  Elsie Hunter was always a source of unhappiness to her brother. As hebegan to ge
t up in life Steve had a growing passion for being respectedby his fellows. It got to be something of an obsession with him andamong other things he wanted very much to be thought of as one who hadgood blood in his veins. A man whom he hired searched out hisancestry, and with the exception of his immediate family it seemedvery satisfactory. The sister, with her twisted body and her face thattwitched so persistently, seemed to be everlastingly sneering at him. Hegrew half afraid to come into her presence. After he began to grow richhe married Ernestine, the daughter of the soap maker at Buffalo, andwhen her father died she also had a great deal of money. His own fatherdied and he set up a household of his own. That was in the time when bighouses began to appear at the edge of the berry lands and on the hillssouth of Bidwell. On his father's death Steve became guardian for hissister. The jeweler had left a small estate and it was entirely in theson's hands. Elsie lived with one servant in a small house in town andwas put in the position of being entirely dependent on her brother'sbounty. In a sense it might be said that she lived by her hatred of him.When on rare occasions he came to her house she would not see him. Aservant came to the door and reported her asleep. Almost every month shewrote a letter demanding that her share of her father's money behanded over to her, but it did no good. Steve occasionally spoke to anacquaintance of his difficulty with her. "I am more sorry for the womanthan I can say," he declared. "It's the dream of my life to make thepoor afflicted soul happy. You see yourself that I provide her withevery comfort of life. Ours is an old family. I have it from an expertin such matters that we are descendants of one Hunter, a courtier in thecourt of Edward the Second of England. Our blood has perhaps becomea little thin. All the vitality of the family was centered in me.My sister does not understand me and that has been the cause of muchunhappiness and heart burning, but I shall always do my duty by her."

  In the late afternoon of the spring day that was also the most eventfulday of his life, Steve went quickly along the Wheeling Station platformto the door of the telegraph office. It was a public place, but beforegoing in he stopped, again straightened his tie and brushed his clothes,and then knocked at the door. As there was no response he opened thedoor softly and looked in. Hugh was at his desk but did not look up.Steve went in and closed the door. By chance the moment of his entrancewas also a big moment in the life of the man he had come to see.The mind of the young inventor, that had for so long been dreamy anduncertain, had suddenly become extraordinarily clear and free. One ofthe inspired moments that come to intense natures, working intensely,had come to him. The mechanical problem he was trying so hard to workout became clear. It was one of the moments that Hugh afterwards thoughtof as justifying his existence, and in later life he came to live forsuch moments. With a nod of his head to Steve he arose and hurried outto the building that was used by the Wheeling as a freight warehouse.The jeweler's son ran at his heels. On an elevated platform before thefreight warehouse sat an odd looking agricultural implement, a machinefor rooting potatoes out of the ground that had been received on the daybefore and was now awaiting delivery to some farmer. Hugh dropped to hisknees beside the machine and examined it closely. Muttered exclamationsbroke from his lips. For the first time in his life he was notembarrassed in the presence of another person. The two men, the onealmost grotesquely tall, the other short of stature and already inclinedtoward corpulency, stared at each other. "What is it you're inventing? Icame to see you about that," Steve said timidly.

  Hugh did not answer the question directly. He stepped across the narrowplatform to the freight warehouse and began to make a rude drawing onthe side of the building. Then he tried to explain his plant-settingmachine. He spoke of it as a thing already achieved. At the moment hethought of it in that way. "I had not thought of the use of alarge wheel with the arms attached at regular intervals," he saidabsent-mindedly. "I will have to find money now. That'll be the nextstep. It will be necessary to make a working model of the machine now. Imust find out what changes I'll have to make in my calculations."

  The two men returned to the telegraph office and while Hugh listenedSteve made his proposal. Even then he did not understand what themachine that was to be made was to do. It was enough for him that amachine was to be made and he wanted to share in its ownership at once.As the two men walked back from the freight warehouse, his mind tookhold of Hugh's remark about getting money. Again he was afraid. "There'ssome one in the background," he thought. "Now I must make a proposal hecan't refuse. I mustn't leave until I've made a deal with him."

  Fairly carried away by his anxiety, Steve proposed to provide money outof his own pocket to make the model of the machine. "We'll rent the oldpickle factory across the track," he said, opening the door and pointingwith a trembling finger. "I can get it cheap. I'll have windows anda floor put in. Then I'll get you a man to whittle out a model of themachine. Allie Mulberry can do it. I'll get him for you. He can whittleanything if you only show him what you want. He's half crazy and won'tget on to our secret. When the model is made, leave it to me, you justleave it to me."

  Rubbing his hands together Steve walked boldly to The telegrapher'sdesk and picking up a sheet of paper began to write out a contract. Itprovided that Hugh Was to get a royalty of ten per cent. of the sellingprice on the machine he had invented and that was to be manufacturedby a company to be organized by Steven Hunter. The contract also statedthat a promoting company was to be organized at once and money providedfor the experimental work Hugh had yet to do. The Missourian wasto begin getting a salary at once. He was to risk nothing, as Steveelaborately explained. When he was ready for them mechanics were to beemployed and their salaries paid. When the contract had been written andread aloud, a copy was made and Hugh, who was again embarrassed beyondwords, signed his name.

  With a flourish of his hand Steve laid a little pile of money on thedesk. "That's for a starter," he said and turned to frown at George Pikewho at that moment came to the door. The freight agent went quickly awayand the two men were left alone together. Steve shook hands with his newpartner. He went out and then came in again. "You understand," he saidmysteriously. "The fifty dollars is your first month's salary. I wasready for you. I brought it along. You just leave everything to me, justyou leave it to me." Again he went out and Hugh was left alone. He sawthe young man go across the tracks to the old factory and walk up anddown before it. When a farmer came along and shouted at him, he did notreply, but stepping back into the road swept the deserted old buildingwith his eyes as a general might have looked over a battlefield. Thenhe went briskly down the road toward town and the farmer turned on hiswagon seat to stare after him.

  Hugh McVey also stared. When Steve had gone away, he walked to the endof the station platform and looked along the road toward town. It seemedto him wonderful that he had at last held conversation with a citizenof Bidwell. A little of the import of the contract he had signed came tohim, and he went into the station and got his copy of it and put it inhis pocket. Then he came out again. When he read it over and realizedanew that he was to be paid a living wage and have time and help to workout the problem that had now become vastly important to his happiness,it seemed to him that he had been in the presence of a kind of god.He remembered the words of Sarah Shepard concerning the bright alertcitizens of eastern towns and realized that he had been in the presenceof such a being, that he had in some way become connected in hisnew work with such a one. The realization overcame him completely.Forgetting entirely his duties as a telegrapher, he closed the officeand went for a walk across the meadows and in the little patches ofwoodlands that still remained standing in the open plain north ofPickleville. He did not return until late at night, and when he did, hadnot solved the puzzle as to what had happened. All he got out of it wasthe fact that the machine he had been trying to make was of great andmysterious importance to the civilization into which he had come tolive and of which he wanted so keenly to be a part. There seemed to himsomething almost sacred in that fact. A new determination to completeand perfect his plant-setting machine h
ad taken possession of him.

  * * * * *

  The meeting to organize a promotion company that would in turn launchthe first industrial enterprise in the town of Bidwell was held in theback room of the Bidwell bank one afternoon in June. The berry seasonhad just come to an end and the streets were full of people. A circushad come to town and at one o'clock there was a parade. Before thestores horses belonging to visiting country people stood hitched in twolong rows. The meeting in the bank was not held until four o'clock,when the banking business was at an end for the day. It had been a hot,stuffy afternoon and a storm threatened. For some reason the whole townhad an inkling of the fact that a meeting was to be held on that day,and in spite of the excitement caused by the coming of the circus, itwas in everybody's mind. From the very beginning of his upward journeyin life, Steve Hunter had the faculty of throwing an air of mystery andimportance about everything he did. Every one saw the workings of themachinery by which the myth concerning himself was created, but wasnevertheless impressed. Even the men of Bidwell who retained the abilityto laugh at Steve could not laugh at the things he did.

  For two months before the day on which the meeting was held, the townhad been on edge. Every one knew that Hugh McVey had suddenly givenup his place in the telegraph office and that he was engaged in someenterprise with Steve Hunter. "Well, I see he has thrown off the mask,that fellow," said Alban Foster, superintendent of the Bidwell schools,in speaking of the matter to the Reverend Harvey Oxford, the minister ofthe Baptist Church.

  Steve saw to it that although every one was curious the curiosity wasunsatisfied. Even his father was left in the dark. The two men had asharp quarrel about the matter, but as Steve had three thousand dollarsof his own, left him by his mother, and was well past his twenty-firstyear, there was nothing his father could do.

  At Pickleville the windows and doors at the back of the deserted factorywere bricked up, and over the windows and the door at the front, where afloor had been laid, iron bars specially made by Lew Twining the Bidwellblacksmith had been put. The bars over the door locked the place atnight and gave the factory the air of a prison. Every evening before hewent to bed Steve walked to Pickleville. The sinister appearance of thebuilding at night gave him a peculiar satisfaction. "They'll find outwhat I'm up to when I want 'em to," he said to himself. Allie Mulberryworked at the factory during the day. Under Hugh's direction he whittledpieces of wood into various shapes, but had no idea of what he wasdoing. No one but the half-wit and Steve Hunter were admitted to thesociety of the telegraph operator. When Allie Mulberry came into theMain Street at night, every one stopped him and a thousand questionswere asked, but he only shook his head and smiled foolishly. OnSunday afternoons crowds of men and women walked down Turner's Pike toPickleville and stood looking at the deserted building, but no one triedto enter. The bars were in place and window shades were drawn over thewindows. Above the door that faced the road there was a large sign."Keep Out. This Means You," the sign said.

  The four men who met Steve in the bank knew vaguely that some sort ofinvention was being perfected, but did not know what it was. They spokein an offhand way of the matter to their friends and that increased thegeneral curiosity. Every one tried to guess what was up. When Steve wasnot about, John Clark and young Gordon Hart pretended to know everythingbut gave the impression of men sworn to secrecy. The fact that Stevetold them nothing seemed to them a kind of insult. "The young upstart,I believe yet he's a bluff," the banker declared to his friend, TomButterworth.

  On Main Street the old and young men who stood about before the storesin the evening tried also to make light of the jeweler's son and the airof importance he constantly assumed. They also spoke of him as a youngupstart and a windbag, but after the beginning of his connection withHugh McVey, something of conviction went out of their voices. "I readin the paper that a man in Toledo made thirty thousand dollars out of aninvention. He got it up in less than a day. He just thought of it. It'sa new kind of way for sealing fruit cans," a man in the crowd beforeBirdie Spink's drug store absent-mindedly observed.

  Inside the drug store by the empty stove, Judge Hanby talkedpersistently of the time when factories would come. He seemed to thosewho listened a sort of John the Baptist crying out of the coming ofthe new day. One evening in May of that year, when a goodly crowd wasassembled, Steve Hunter came in and bought a cigar. Every one becamesilent. Birdie Spinks was for some mysterious reason a little upset.In the store something happened that, had there been some one there torecord it, might later have been remembered as the moment that markedthe coming of the new age to Bidwell. The druggist, after he had handedout the cigar, looked at the young man whose name had so suddenly comeupon every one's lips and whom he had known from babyhood, and thenaddressed him as no young man of his age had ever before been addressedby an older citizen of the town. "Well, good evening, Mr. Hunter," hesaid respectfully. "And how do you find yourself this evening?"

  To the men who met him in the bank, Steve described the plant-settingmachine and the work it was intended to do. "It's the most perfect thingof its kind I've ever seen," he said with the air of one who has spenthis life as an expert examiner of machinery. Then, to the amazement ofevery one, he produced sheets covered with figures estimating the costof manufacturing the machine. To the men present it seemed as thoughthe question as to the practicability of the machine had already beensettled. The sheets covered with figures made the actual beginning ofmanufacturing seem near at hand. Without raising his voice and quite asa matter of course, Steve proposed that the men present subscribe eachthree thousand dollars to the stock of a promotion company, the moneyto be used to perfect the machine and put it actually to work in thefields, while a larger company for the building of a factory was beingorganized. For the three thousand dollars each of the men would receivelater six thousand dollars in stock in the larger company. They wouldmake one hundred per cent. on their first investment. As for himself heowned the invention and it was very valuable. He had already receivedmany offers from other men in other places. He wanted to stick to hisown town and to the men who had known him since he was a boy. He wouldretain a controlling interest in the larger company and that wouldenable him to take care of his friends. John Clark he proposed to maketreasurer of the promotion company. Every one could see he would be theright man. Gordon Hart should be manager. Tom Butterworth could, if hecould find time to give it, help him in the actual organization of thelarger company. He did not propose to do anything in a small way. Muchstock would have to be sold to farmers, as well as to townspeople, andhe could see no reason why a certain commission for the selling of stockshould not be paid.

  The four men came out of the back room of the bank just as the stormthat had all day been threatening broke on Main Street. They stoodtogether by the front window and watched the people skurry along pastthe stores homeward-bound from the circus. Farmers jumping into theirwagons started their horses away on the trot. The whole street waspopulous with people shouting and running. To an observing personstanding at the bank window, Bidwell, Ohio, might have seemed no longera quiet town filled with people who lived quiet lives and thought quietthoughts, but a tiny section of some giant modern city. The sky wasextraordinarily black as from the smoke of a mill. The hurrying peoplemight have been workmen escaping from the mill at the end of the day.Clouds of dust swept through the street. Steve Hunter's imagination wasaroused. For some reason the black clouds of dust and the running peoplegave him a tremendous sense of power. It almost seemed to him that hehad filled the sky with clouds and that something latent in him hadstartled the people. He was anxious to get away from the men who hadjust agreed to join him in his first great industrial adventure. He feltthat they were after all mere puppets, creatures he could use, men whowere being swept along by him as the people running along the streetswere being swept along by the storm. He and the storm were in a way akinto each other. He had an impulse to be alone with the storm, to walkdignified and upright in the face
of it as he felt that in the future hewould walk dignified and upright in the face of men.

  Steve went out of the bank and into the street. The men inside shoutedat him, telling him he would get wet, but he paid no attention to theirwarning. When he had gone and when his father had run quickly acrossthe street to his jewelry store, the three men who were left in thebank looked at each other and laughed. Like the loiterers before BirdieSpinks' drug-store, they wanted to belittle him and had an inclinationto begin calling him names; but for some reason they could not doit. Something had happened to them. They looked at each other with aquestion in their eyes. Each man waited for the others to speak. "Well,whatever happens we can't lose much of anything," John Clark finallyobserved.

  And over the bridge and out into Turner's Pike walked Steve Hunter, theembryo industrial magnate. Across the great stretches of fields thatlay beside the road the wind ran furiously, tearing leaves off trees,carrying great volumes of dust before it. The hurrying black cloudsin the sky were, he fancied, like clouds of smoke pouring out of thechimneys of factories owned by himself. In fancy also he saw his townbecome a city, bathed in the smoke of his enterprises. As he lookedabroad over the fields swept by the storm of wind, he realized that theroad along which he walked would in time become a city street. "Prettysoon I'll get an option on this land," he said meditatively. An exaltedmood took possession of him and when he got to Pickleville he did not gointo the shop where Hugh and Allie Mulberry were at work, but turning,walked back toward town in the mud and the driving rain.

  It was a time when Steve wanted to be by himself, to feel himself theone great man of the community. He had intended to go into the oldpickle factory and escape the rain, but when he got to the railroadtracks, had turned back because he realized suddenly that in thepresence of the silent, intent inventor he had never been able to feelbig. He wanted to feel big on that evening and so, unmindful of the rainand of his hat, that was caught up by the wind and blown away into afield, he went along the deserted road thinking great thoughts. At aplace where there were no houses he stopped for a moment and liftedhis tiny hands to the skies. "I'm a man. I tell you what, I'm a man.Whatever any one says, I tell you what, I'm a man," he shouted into thevoid.