"You mean up in Wyoming; the Neponset people wrote me that you were a reformed cattleman."
"Yes, I was winter-killed at the business." He assumed that Porter would not care particularly for the details of his failure. Western men are, he knew, much more tolerant of failure than Eastern men; but he was relieved to hear the banker drawling on with a comment on Clarkson, its commercial history and prospects.
At the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Clarkson Chamber of Commerce, the local boy orator, who made a point of quoting Holy Writ in his speeches, spoke of Clarkson as "no mean city," just as many another orator has applied this same apt Pauline phrase to many another metropolis. The business of Clarkson had to do with primary employments and needs. The cattle of a thousand hills and of many rough pastures were gathered here; and here wheat and corn from three states were assembled. In exchange for these products, Clarkson returned to the country all of the necessities and some of the luxuries of life. Several important railway lines had their administrative offices here. Ores were brought from the Rockies, from Mexico, and even from British Columbia, to the great smelters whose smoke and fumes hung over the town. Neither coal, wood nor iron lay near at hand, so that manufacturing was almost unknown; but the packing-houses and smelters gave employment to many laborers, drawn in great measure from the Slavonic races.
Varney Street cut through the town at right angles to the river, bisecting the business district. It then gradually threw off its commercial aspect until at last it was lined with the homes of most of Clarkson's wealthiest citizens. An exaggerated estimate of the value of corner lots had caused many of them to be left vacant; and weeds and signboards exercised eminent domain between booms. North and south of Varney Street were other thoroughfares which strove to be equally fashionable, and here citizens had sometimes built themselves houses that were, as they said, as good as anything in Varney Street. Everywhere ragged edges remained; old unpainted frame buildings lingered in blocks that otherwise contained handsome houses. Sugar-loaf cubes of clay loomed lonesomely, with houses stranded high on their summits, where property owners had been too poor to cut down their bits of earth to conform to new levels. The clay banks were ugly, but they were doomed to remain until the next high tide of prosperity.
The Clarkson Club stood at the edge of the commercial district, and its Milwaukee brick walls rose hot and staring in the July sun as Porter and Saxton approached.
"Here we are," said Porter, leading the way into the wide hall. "We'll arrange about your business relations later. There's a very bad lunch ready upstairs, and we'll go against that first."
There were only a few men in the dining-room, seated at a round table. Porter exchanged salutations with them as he passed on to a small table at the end of the room. Those who were of his own age called Porter, "Billy," and he included them all in the careless nod of old acquaintance. Porter offered Saxton the wine card, which the young man declined with instinctive knowledge that he was expected to do so. They took the simple table d'hôte, which was, as Porter had predicted, very bad. The banker ate little and carried the burden of the conversation.
They went from the table for an inspection of the club, and arranged with the clerk in the office for a room on the third floor, which Mr. Saxton was to have, so Porter told the clerk, until he didn't want it any more.
"It's all right about the rules," he said; "if the house committee kick about it, send them to me." They stopped in the lounging room, where the men from the round table were now talking or looking at newspapers. Porter introduced Saxton to all of them, stating in his humorous way, with variations in every case, that this was a new man in town; that victims were scarce in hard times, and that they must make the most of him. Several of the men who shook hands with Saxton were railroad officials, but nearly every line of business was represented. All seemed to wear their business consciously, and Saxton was made aware of their several employments in one way or another as he stood talking to them. He felt that their own frankness should elicit a response on his part, and he stated that he had come to represent the interests of "Eastern people,"—a phrase which, in that territory, has weight and significance. This, he thought, should be sufficiently explicit; and he felt that his interlocutors were probably appraising him with selfish eyes as a possible customer or client. However, they were very cordial, and presently he found that they were chaffing one another for his benefit, and trying to bring him within the arc of their own easy comradeship.
"If you're going with me," said Porter at his elbow, "you'd better get a move on you." But the whole group went out together, Porter leaving Saxton to the others, with that confidence in human friendliness which is peculiar to the social intercourse of men. They made him feel their honest wish to consider him one of themselves, making a point of saying to him, as they dropped out one by one, that they hoped to see him often. Porter led the way back down Varney Street, smoking meditatively and carrying his hat in his hand. He said at the bank door: "Now you make them give you what you want at the club, and if they don't, you want to raise the everlasting Nick. I've got a house up here on Varney Street,—come up for dinner to-morrow night and we'll see if we can't raise a breeze for you. It's hotter than Suez here, and you'd better take my advice about starting in slow."