“There’ll be a great reduction in breakage and waste,” remarked another employee.
“The directors can leave it to us to make the next year’s dividend a dandy one.”
These were just a few of the grateful encomiums flying around.
On the day following the stockholders’ meeting the newly elected directors convened, all except Grant Jones, who was over at Dillon and had not yet been advised of his election. After Major Buell Hampton had been voted into the chair a communication from W. B. Grady was read, stating that he wished to know at once if the directors desired his services for the ensuing year; if so he required a written contract, and should the directors not be ready to comply with this ultimatum they could interpret this letter as a formal resignation. There was a general smile around the directors’ table at this bluffing acceptance of the inevitable. It was promptly moved, seconded, and carried unanimously that Mr. W. B. Grady be at once relieved from all further connection with the Smelter Company’s plant and business.
Major Hampton then explained that in accordance with his scheme the men in the various departments would be invited at an early date to elect their foremen, and these foremen in turn would have the power, not to elect a general manager, but to recommend one for the final consideration of the directors. Until a permanent appointment was made he suggested that Boney Earnest, the blast furnace foreman dismissed by the late manager because of a personal quarrel, should take charge of the plant, he being a man of tried experience and worthy of absolute trust. This suggestion was promptly turned into a substantive motion and adopted by formal resolution. The meeting adjourned after Director Bragdon in his capacity as company attorney had been instructed to proceed immediately to the work of preparing the proper amendments to the by-laws and taking all legal steps necessary to put into operation the new plan.
Thus neither mine nor smelting plant was shut down, but everything went on without interruption and with greater vigor than before the momentous meetings of stockholders and directors. The only immediate visible effect of the company’s radical change in policy was Grady’s deposition from the post which had enabled him to exercise a cruel tyranny over the workingmen.
And in the solitude of his home the dismissed manager, broken financially although those around him did not yet know it, was nursing schemes of revenge against Buell Hampton, the man of mystery who had humiliated him and ousted him from power.
Where was his henchman, Bud Bledsoe?—that was the question throbbing in Grady’s brain. But Bud Bledsoe was now an outlaw among the hills, with a price on his head and a sheriff’s posse ready at a moment’s notice to get on his heels.
“By God, I’ve got to find him,” muttered Grady. And that night, in the falling dusk, he rode out alone into the mountain fastnesses.