Mr. Stillman, owner of hundreds of acres of forest, was different. He wanted to be near at hand to watch his timber being taken out slowly and carefully and meanwhile to bring up his two small sons, healthy and virtuous, far away from city influences. He made a small farm up in the high south-west segment of the town against the woods, with orchards and sheep pasture and beehives and a big white farm-house, solidly built. He became a deacon in the Presbyterian church and one of the corner-stones of the town.
Mr. Goff, owner of mills six miles out, kept up a comfortable place in town to serve as a half-way house between his mills and his home in a city a couple of hundred miles distant. He believed that his appearance as a regular townsman had a steadying influence on his workmen, that it gave them faith in him. His placid middle-aged wife accompanied him back and forth on his weekly visits to the mills and interested herself in those of his workers who had families.
Mill Manager Henderson snapped at the chance to run the Company store as well as to manage several mills. He saw in it something besides food and clothing for his large family of red-haired girls. Although he lived down at one of the mills he was counted as a townsman. He was a pillar in the Methodist church and his eldest daughter played the piano there.
George Brainerd, pudgy chief clerk of the Company store, was hand in glove with Henderson. He loved giving all his energies, undistracted by family or other ties, to the task of making the Company's workers come out at the end of the season in the Company's debt instead of having cleared a few hundred dollars as they were made to believe, on the day they were hired, would be the case. The percentage he received for his cleverness was nothing to him in comparison with the satisfaction he felt in his ability to manipulate.
Lanky Jim Dunn, the station agent, thirty-three and unmarried, satisfied his hunger for new places by coming to Five Points. He hated old settled lines of conduct. As station agent, he had a hand in everything and on every one that came in and went out of the town. He held a sort of gauge on the Life of the town. He chaffed all the girls who came down to see the evening train come in and tipped off the young men as to what was doing at the town hotel.
Dr. Smelter, thin-lipped and cold-eyed, elegant in manner and in dress, left his former practice without regret. He opened his office in Five Points hoping that in a new community obscure diseases did not flourish. He was certain that lack of skill would not be as apparent there as in a well-established village.
Rev. Trotman had been lured hither by the anticipation of a virgin field for saving souls; Rev. Little, because he dared not let any of his own fold be exposed to the pitfalls of an opposing creed.
Dave Fellows left off setting chain pumps in Gurnersville and renewed his teaching experience by coming to Five Points to be principal of the school. Dick Shelton's wife dragged her large brood of little girls and her drunken husband along after Fellows in order to be sure of some one to bring Dick home from the saloon before he drank up the last penny. It made little difference to her where she earned the family living by washing.
So they came, one after another, and filled up the town—Abe Cohen, the Jew clothing dealer, Barringer, the druggist, Dr. Barton, rival of Dr. Smelter and a far more highly skilled practitioner, Jake O'Flaherty, the saloon-keeper, Widow Stokes, rag carpet weaver and gossip, Jeremy Whitling, town carpenter, and his golden-blonde daughter Lucy, school-teacher, Dr. Sohmer, dentist. Every small community needs these various souls. No sooner is the earth scraped clean for a new village than they come, one by one, until the town is complete. So it happened in Five Points until there came to be somewhat fewer than a thousand souls. There the town stood.
Stores and offices completely took up the circle of Main Street and straggled a little down the residence streets. Under the fringe of trees business hummed where side by side flourished Grimes' meat shop, the drug store with the dentist's office above, Henderson's General Store, as the Company store was called, Brinker's grocery store, the Clothing Emporium, McGilroy's barber shop, Backus' hardware, and the post office. The Five Points Argus issued weekly its two pages from the dingy office behind the drug store. Graham's Livery did a big business down near the station.