Gibbs and Stephen sat through that long summer, idly for the most part, in their shirt-sleeves in the shade of their office; the only business they had was to see Gibbs's creditors, and in the end these ceased to trouble them.
At first Stephen had been somewhat sustained by Gibbs's confidence; for Gibbs had been sure things would come right, that the depression was only temporary; but in the end even his fine courage failed him. He spent less and less time in the shade of his office, and more and more time at Mr. Youtsey's bar; but at last Mr. Yout-sey announced that he was about to leave to seek fortune elsewhere.
“I've sat up with the corpse,” he told Gibbs jocosely, “and now I'm going to pull out. I leave the last words to you, for you seem to be chief mourner; I reckon you'll stay to the finish.”
“I don't know about that,” retorted Gibbs briskly. “You can't keep a squirrel on the ground; but I'm free to say I don't want to make any mistakes next time. I'm getting along to a time in life when I don't expect to make more than two or three more fortunes before I quit.”
“Well, you don't squeal none, general, that's what I admire about you; win or lose, there's a kind word still coming,” said Mr. Youtsey admiringly.
In private to Stephen, Gibbs deplored the conditions which he semed to think were largely responsible for their present situation; he was seeing deeper than the mere surface of things.
“The war was a mistake, Steve; patriotism and sentiment aside, it was a big mistake. It's knocked half the country into a cocked hat. The South is dead, and in my opinion we won't live long enough to see it come to life. If it had been just left alone, it would have been mighty interesting to have seen how it would have settled the nigger question. And what's been the result to the nation at large; we've lost over half a million of men—young men who'd a pushed out into the West here, and made this country a wonder. We wouldn't be waiting for population if they'd lived. But it wasn't to be! The country's filling up with all sorts of riff-raff from Europe, a class that never used to come; not the good English and Scotch and Irish, who came because they wanted elbow room; but greasy serfs, who ain't caring a damn for anything but wages. I tell you in twenty years an American will be a curiosity. And to think the way they were wasted, just thrown at each other by the thousands, in the greatest and crudest war of modern times.”
But Stephen could not sit there gossiping with Gibbs while Grant City sank into the prairie, or its shabbily built houses collapsed about his ears; he must do something, yet what was he to do? Gibbs came to his rescue with a suggestion.
“I been thinking of your luck, Steve,” he said one day with kindly concern. “I can hold up this building quite a while by myself just by leaning against it; I reckon it will be about a hundred years before anybody sells a lot again in Grant City, and you can't wait on that, on the chance that you will be the lucky fellow.”
“If I could go!” cried Stephen, with savage earnestness.