"I'll give you a cheque for a couple of thousand dollars, which is as far as I care to go just now," he said.
He took a pen, and Edmonds watched him with quiet amusement as he wrote. As a matter of fact, Hawtrey was in one respect, at least, perfectly safe in entrusting the money to him. Edmonds had deprived a good many prairie farmers of their possessions in his time, but he never stooped to any crude trickery. He left that to the smaller fry. Just then he was playing a deep and cleverly thought-out game.
He pocketed the cheque Hawtrey gave him, and then discussed other subjects for half an hour or so until he rose.
"You might ask them to get my team out. I've some business at Lander's and have ordered a room there," he said. "I'll send you a line when there's any change in the market."
CHAPTER XXI.
GREGORY MAKES UP HIS MIND
Wheat was still being flung on to a lifeless market when Hawtrey walked out of the mortgage jobber's place of business in the railroad settlement one bitter afternoon. He had a big roll of paper money in his pocket, and was feeling particularly pleased with himself, for prices had steadily fallen since he had joined in the bear operation Edmonds had suggested, and the result of it had proved eminently satisfactory. This was why he had just given the latter a further draft on Wyllard's bank, with instructions to sell wheat down on a considerably more extensive scale. He meant to operate in earnest now, which was exactly what the broker had anticipated, but in this case he had decided to let Hawtrey operate alone. Indeed, being an astute and far-seeing man he had gone so far as to hint that caution might be advisable, though he had at the same time been careful to show Hawtrey only those market reports which had a distinctly pessimistic tone. Edmonds was rather disposed to agree with the men who looked forward to a reaction before very long.
Hawtrey glanced about him as he strode down the street. It was wholly unpaved, and rutted deep, but the drifted snow had partly filled the hollows up, and it did not look very much rougher than it would have done if somebody had recently driven a plough through it. A rude plank sidewalk ran along both sides of it, raised a foot or two above the ground that foot-passengers might escape the mire of the thaw in spring, and immediately behind the sidewalk squat, weatherbeaten, frame houses, all of much the same pattern, rose abruptly. In some of them, however, the fronts were carried up as high as the ridge of the shingled roof, giving them an unpleasantly square appearance. Here and there a dilapidated waggon stood with lowered pole before a store, but it was a particularly bitter afternoon, and there was nobody in the street. The place looked desolate and forlorn, with a leaden sky hanging over it and an icy wind sweeping through the streets.
Hawtrey, however, was used to that, and strode along briskly until he reached the open space which divided the little wooden town from the unfenced railroad track. It was strewn with fine dusty snow, and the huge bulk of the grain elevators towered high above it against the lowering sky. As it happened, a freight locomotive was just hauling a long string of wheat cars out of a side-track amidst a discordant tolling of its bell. It stopped presently, and though Hawtrey could not see anything beyond the big cars he fancied by the shouts which broke out that something unusual was going on. He was expecting Sally, who was going East to Brandon by a train due in an hour or two.