ROCKERVELT settled with John Steele by drawing his cheque for three hundred and ninety-eight thousand six hundred dollars, and it was the circumvented Blair himself who carried through the negotiations. Steele asked half a million at the beginning, but had made up his mind to accept three hundred thousand dollars. As he wished to net this sum clear, he added to it the amount he paid for the stock, including Miss Slocum’s ten thousand dollars, and the percentage, which came to nearly forty thousand more. Then he informed Blair he was forced to add ten thousand dollars for that kick, which he did. He told Blair that he remembered the kick on an average of once a day, and that this thought humiliated him. Therefore he would be compelled to charge one hundred dollars a day for thinking of the assault while negotiations were pending. Whether this time-penalty hastened negotiations or not will never be known, but it accounts for the odd figures on the Rockervelt cheque, and, after paying all liabilities, Steele found himself with more than his minimum sum in hand.
The station-master of Slocum Junction was given the position of travelling man on the Wheat Belt Line, at a salary of fifty dollars a week, which seemed to him princely. Miss Dorothy Slocum insisted on finishing her year at the Bunkerville school, but during the Christmas holidays she married the station-master, and they set up housekeeping in Chicago with a nice little bank account of nearly fifty thousand dollars. The young lady’s dream of life was now realised. She enjoyed the privilege of being an inhabitant of the Western metropolis, in comfortable circumstances, with everything at her disposal that a large city had to bestow. John Steele, in the New Year, had the pleasure of escorting the young woman to a matinee, and when he asked her if the few weeks’ experience of Chicago had changed her mind regarding the delights of the place, she replied that Chicago was heavenly; which called up a smile to the young man’s lips as he remembered the story of a Chicago man who had died and gone to the other place, and told an inmate thereof that his new residence was preferable to Chicago. But John didn’t tell the story to his companion. He complained pathetically that she had broken his heart by marrying the station-master, but she laughed and said she had broken his heart no more than Blair had broken his neck by precipitating him down the railway embankment from the running train—which, by the way, was true enough.
As time went on, he saw less and less of his Bunkerville friends. He was rising rapidly in the financial world, had resigned his position on the Wheat Belt Line, important as it was, and had set up an office for himself. The newspapers made a great deal of his encounter with old Rockervelt and his victory over the magnate, but Steele was a clear-headed man who indulged in no delusions on the score of that episode. He had spent some very anxious days while negotiations were pending, and no one knew better than he that if Rockervelt had decided to fight, it might have cost the great railway king more than he had paid, but Steele would have been bankrupt when the battle was ended. He resolved never again to combat a force so many thousand times stronger than himself. He would be content with a smaller game and less risk. John attributed the few grey hairs at his temple to those anxious days while Rockervelt was making up his mind, keeping silent and giving forth no sign.
But grey hairs do not necessarily bring wisdom, and so little does a man suspect what is ahead of him that a few tears from a pretty woman sent him into a contest without knowing who his adversary was, to find himself at last face to face with the most formidable financial foe that the world could offer.
He had almost forgotten his friends from the West, when one day the young woman’s card was brought up to him as he sat in his office, planning an aggression which was still further to augment his ever-increasing bank account. He looked up with a smile as Dorothy entered, but it was stricken from his lips when he saw how changed she was. All colour had left her cheeks, and her eyes were red as if with weeping.
“Good gracious!” he cried, springing to his feet, “what is the matter? Have you been ill?”
“No,” she said, with a catch in her voice, sinking into the chair he offered, “but I am nearly distracted. Oh, Mr. Steele! you said once that the country was sweet and soothing after the turmoil of the city, and I told you I was tired of the country’s dullness. It was a foolish, foolish remark. I wish we were back there, and done with this dreadful town!”
“Why, what has happened? Is it your husband, then, who is ill?”
“No—yes, he is—or, rather, yes and no; for, like myself, he is at his wits’ end, and doesn’t know what to do; therefore I have come to seek your advice,” and with this she broke down and wept.
John thought at first that her husband had been dismissed; and if that were the case, Steele, being no longer connected with the railway, would be powerless to aid. Still, he did not see why such an event should cause so much distress, for a young couple in good health, with fifty thousand dollars in the bank, are not exactly paupers, even in Chicago.