CHAPTER XVI
Between the fall of darkness Sunday night and the breaking of dawn on Monday industrious persons had beautified Diversity by nailing to tree, fence, and barn half-tone productions of a photograph of Peleg Goodwin, wherein Peleg was shown wearing a collar of the Daniel Webster type and an expression like a slightly soured Signer of the Declaration. Peleg’s beard was neatly trimmed; there was a part in his bushy hair. Somehow it did not impress one as authentic, but as a bit of trick photography. It excited some argument. People were disinclined to believe it really was Peleg, but some more glorious being who chanced to resemble Peleg somewhat.
“That there Peleg!” snorted Dolf Springer. “You couldn’t pound Peleg’s face into no such noble expression with a sledge. That there’s Peleg’s twin brother that died and went to heaven ’fore Peleg got him into bad habits.”
“If that’s Peleg,” said old man Ruggles in a voice like a wheezy tin whistle, “then these here blue jeans is broadcloth weddin’-pants.”
“I don’t see but what it resembles him close,” said a supporter of Goodwin’s.
“That,” said Dolf, “is prob’ly ’cause somebody’s give you a dollar to think that way.”
“My vote hain’t for sale,” shouted the virtuous citizen.
“Neither does a mortgage draw int’rest,” said Dolf.
Jim drove on, chuckling. One thing was apparent—somebody was spending money to defeat Zaanan Frame. It was not all going for printing, either, Jim felt certain. How would Zaanan meet this attack? Had he money to spend in a campaign? A worry lest the old fellow had passed his fighting-day oppressed Jim. He stopped at Zaanan’s office.
“I see the campaign has opened,” he said.
“Peleg’s a handsome critter, hain’t he?” Zaanan said.
“Moran’s going to dump a lot of money and a lot of dirty politics in here,” Jim said. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Me? Not much, I calc’late. I hain’t what you’d call a political campaigner. Don’t go in for no hip-hurrah just ’round election-time. Keep reasonable busy the whole twelve months.”
“Aren’t you going to do anything to offset Moran’s money?”
“Dun’no’s I be,” said Zaanan, placidly.
“They’ll beat you in the caucus as sure as you’re a foot high,” Jim said, anxiously. “They’ve got to do it there. I don’t believe they could worry you in an election.”
“Caucuses is uncertain,” said Zaanan. “Delegates and sheep is close related. Can’t never tell when or where they’ll run.”
“Do you need money?” Jim asked, a shade diffidently. “I thought if you did—”
“Young feller, if I had a million dollars I wouldn’t spend a cent. If folks elect me to office it’ll be ’cause they want me, and not ’cause they’re paid to vote for me. But I calc’late I’m obleeged to you. It was a right friendly offer.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Yes,” said Zaanan, with a chuckle; “go ’long and tend to your own business. Git your own neck out of the noose ’fore you reach out to help me over a fence. G’-by, Jim.”
When Jim got to the mill he found Grierson ready with his weekly report. The old bookkeeper had put in a happy Sunday preparing it. From morning till night he had scratched and crackled in figures and computations—a regular debauch.
“She’s coming. She’s coming now,” Grierson said, his face wrinkling dryly as if the skin were ledger paper. “Shows sixty-five boxes to the machine.”
“But shipments are less than ever,” Jim said as he glanced over the sheet.
“Cars,” said Grierson, shortly. “Goods are in the warehouse, but the railroad won’t set in cars to ship them out.”
Moran’s railroad would not set in cars. This was not altogether unexpected. The railroad could hamper him, delay him—and escape under the plea of a car shortage. Crops were moving. The excuse would hold good. Jim knew he was powerless against this new aggression.
Then came a telegram from New York, driving temporarily from Jim’s mind the matter of freight-cars. It was a long telegram:
German steamer Dessau sunk 50,000 boxes pins aboard, bound Bremen to Argentine. Agents Argentine firms offer 70 cents on dock here. Have order 15,000 boxes if can ship ten days. Money on dock. Welliver fill order you cannot.
Seventy cents for pins with the New York market at forty-four cents or thereabouts! A clean killing of nearly fifty-five hundred dollars!
Jim snatched up Grierson’s report. It showed seven thousand boxes packed in the warehouse, and estimated twelve thousand boxes unpacked in the bins. He did not wait to weigh consequences or to offset difficulties.
Accept order. Will ship 15,000 boxes pins ten days this date seventy cents New York.
This message despatched, Jim rushed out into the mill in search of Beam; told him the fact.
“How will we get them packed out?” he asked.
“If you was to ask me serious,” said Beam, with a frown, “I’d say you couldn’t.”
“We’ve got to. How many are we packing out a day?”
“Close to a thousand boxes. These packers are the limit. They can’t get up speed.”
“We’ve got to make some regular shipments. That means about fifteen thousand boxes to pack out in ten days. Put on a double force of packers.”
“Where’ll I git ’em? We’re short now, and no place to go for more.”
“Get boys, then,” said Jim. “And tell the men—any of them that are willing to work evenings—to come in and pack. We’ll run that packing-room twenty-four hours a day if we have to.”
“You’re the boss,” said Beam, dubiously.
Jim went in person to the freight department of the railroad. He made requisition for eight extra cars to be set in within ten days.
“Can’t be done,” said the freight-agent. “We haven’t and won’t have the cars.”
“You mean you have orders not to set in cars for us, don’t you? Well, Mister Freight-Agent, I’m going to have those cars. You see to it they’re set in or things’ll happen round here.”
“You can’t bulldoze me,” said the man. “I know what I’m doin’. You’ll get what cars I set in, and no more. And if you talk too much maybe you won’t get any.”
Jim glared at the man, half of a mind to haul him over the desk and argue with him physically, but thought better of it and slammed out of the office. He had to have those cars. It was equally clear the road would not give them to him. What then?
To reach the office again Jim had to pass through the yard where dry lumber for turned stock was piled. There was, he noticed, a reasonable supply, but no heavy stock. More would have to be bought within the month, for his own sawmill had not yet been able to cut out for drying sufficient quantities to carry on operations. Drying, air-drying, requires time. Until his own boards could dry, lumber must be purchased. Thence came the idea.
He hurried to the office and sent wires to Muskegon, to Traverse City, to Reed City, to the big lumber-mills of the section.
How much two-inch stock can you ship at once. Must come box-cars. Price.
In two hours he had replies, irritated, humorous, bewildered.
“Box-cars? Are you crazy?” one said. Jim grinned. He knew it must sound like lunacy to be ordering lumber of the class he wanted in box-cars. He replied to all, reiterating his demands.
“Fifty cents extra per thousand for loading,” came back replies.
“How many cars?” Jim countered. “When?”
Muskegon could ship two cars next day and one the day after. Traverse could ship three cars within three days. Reed City could ship four, on four successive days.
“O. K.,” wired Jim. “Let them come hustling.”
He had solved his car problem. Moran’s road could not stop cars shipped through. They would be set in on Jim’s siding and unloaded, and because Jim had requisitions in for cars as yet unsupplied, he could reload them and ship them out again filled with his product.
He called in Grierson.
“I’ve accepted an order for fifteen thousand pins for Argentine Republic. Price seventy cents New York. To be shipped in ten days.”
Grierson threw up his hands. “We haven’t the pins. We can’t get the cars to ship them.”
“We’ve got the pins, and the cars are on their way to us. Send your young man out after Beam.”
The superintendent came in presently.
“I’ve got ten box-cars of two-inch maple and birch coming in within the next three or four days. Have a gang ready to take care of it. Put on enough extra men in the shipping department to load as fast as the cars empty,” he said.
Beam gaped at Jim. Then his eyes brightened, he grinned, he threw back his head and roared.
“Mr. Ashe,” he said, when he could speak, “you’re a regular feller, and sudden!”
The cars arrived. On the eighth day fifteen thousand boxes of pins were on their way to New York in eight box-cars, and the freight-agent of Moran’s railroad looked at Jim with the light of admiration in his eyes. Jim had met a sudden emergency suddenly and efficiently. He was tempted to sit down and describe the feat to his father, who would have delighted in it. But he did not. He remembered Clothespin Jimmy’s admonition not to bother him with his business.
But Clothespin Jimmy learned of the matter, which Jim did not know. He learned of it promptly, as he learned most of the details of what went on in the mill, from a source Jim was far from suspecting.
The day after the last car was on its way Zaanan Frame stopped Jim on the street.
“Hain’t forgot that strip of timber of old Le Bar’s?” he asked.
“No,” said Jim.
“Nice afternoon for a drive,” said Zaanan, “out toward Le Bar’s.”
“Very,” said Jim, smiling at the old man’s manner of handling a situation. “Would you like to go with me?”
“No,” said Zaanan, gruffly, “but if I was drivin’ that way and come to Bullet’s Corners and there wa’n’t nobody there, I calc’late I’d slack down and wait till somebody come. G’-by, Jim.”
After dinner Jim drove out toward Le Bar’s. At Bullet’s Corners, waiting in the shade of a big hickory, were Zaanan Frame and his horse Tiffany.
“Howdy,” said Zaanan. “Goin’ somewheres?”
“Thought I’d call on old man Le Bar,” said Jim, playing the game according to Zaanan’s rules.
“Goin’ that way myself,” said Zaanan, with surprise that seemed real. “Calc’late I’ll git there ’bout a quarter of an hour first, seem’s I’ve got the best horse.”
“You have a fine animal,” said Jim, without a quiver.
Zaanan looked over at him suspiciously; gazed at Tiffany’s ancient and knobby frame; opened his mouth as though to make an observation, but decided on silence.
“G’-by, Jim,” he said, in a moment.
“G’-by, Judge,” said Jim.
In an honest fifteen minutes Jim drove on until he saw two old men sitting on the door-step of a house at the roadside. It was a little, weather-beaten house, not such as one would expect to find the owner of a fortune in timber housed in. But one of the men was Zaanan Frame, so Jim stopped and alighted.
“Jim,” said Zaanan, “meet Mr. Le Bar. This here’s Mr. Ashe, Louis.”
“She’s yo’ng man,” said Louis, with a twinkle.
“Mr. Le Bar figgers he’s gittin’ on in life,” said Zaanan. “He sort of wants to git his affairs settled up on account of maybe bein’ called away sudden—”
“When le bon Dieu say,” Louis interjected, softly.
“He owns quite a piece of timber,” said Zaanan, “and figgered you might have some use for it. Hardwood.”
“Yes,” said Jim, not knowing what was expected of him. “How many acres?”
“Twenty t’ousand-odd acre,” said Louis.
“It’ll run twenty to twenty-five thousand beech, birch, and maple to the acre,” said Zaanan.
“Diversity Hardwood Company dey hoffer me twelf dollar an acre,” said Louis. “But me, I not sell to heem for twenty. I sell not at all till comes dat time w’en I’m ready. Now dat time she’s come.”
“How much are you asking?”
“First price—twelf dollar and a half; last price—twelf dollar and a half. No dicker.”
Jim looked at Zaanan, who nodded.
“I’ll take a sixty-day option at that price, if you’re agreeable.”
“How much for dat option?”
“A thousand dollars,” said Jim.
“Ver’ good. We make trade, eh? Now Zaanan she write for us a paper.”
Zaanan completed the legal details; they smoked and ate of Louis’s honey and doughnuts, and started on the return to Diversity.
“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Jim said to Zaanan as their buggies came abreast on a broad stretch of road. “It’s a lot of money.”
“Um! I’ve knowed fellers to do a lot with an option down to Grand Rapids.”
“What ought I to get for this land?”
“Some folks might go as high as thirteen dollars. But if they was apt to lose it I shouldn’t be s’prised if this Diversity Hardwood Company was to go fifteen. It’s wuth it to them—or anybody else. But I calc’late I’d git a bonyfidy offer from some other feller ’fore I went to Moran’s crowd.”
“I calculate so, too,” said Jim. Then after a pause: “Why didn’t you go into this yourself. Judge? You could have handled it.”
“Young feller, I’m past seventy. I got enough so’s nobody kin starve me. I hain’t chick nor child nor relative on earth. What d’you calc’late I’d do with more ’n I’ve got? It’s come too late for me, Jim. I’ve sort of give up my aims and ambitions for Diversity, and hain’t got none left. Diversity’s used me up, sich as I be, and it’s welcome to what it got. And me, I guess I got my pay all right. I’ve seen marryin’s and christenin’s. I’ve seen young folks happy and old folks comforted. I’ve stuck my finger into folkses’ pies, and seen ’em with tears in their eyes that was better ’n thanks. No, son, I’ve had my investment and my profits. You’re welcome to yourn.”