Tom Jarnagan, Junior/Chapter 3
Chapter III.
IN WHICH TOM TAKES A BAITED HOOK.
Norton, Manville's companion, was the agent for the Interstate Trunk Line, a connecting-link between the Wisconsin & Iowa and the Western railways, and so should have been strictly neutral as between the Transcontinental and Jarnagan's line. But the "pointer" concerning the Utah colony had reached him through Manville; and it is a rule in railway soliciting that a man must be loyal to his informant. Hence Norton was, for the time being, Manville's ally.
"Got the contract, you say?" he queried. "When did you get it?"
"Last night, after you'd gone to bed," answered Manville. "There are three or four leaders in the party, but a Swede named Olestrom has the pull on the most of them. I caught him last night, and got him to sign a contract to take the outfit our way."
Norton closed one eye reflectively. "Do you suppose he can deliver the goods?"
Manville laughed. "That remains to be seen. You know what a party contract amounts to: it binds you and the man who signs—and not anybody else. But that's all right, as long as they don't know any better. They're just like a flock of sheep; and if Oiestrom does what he has promised to, they'll follow him all right."
"What did it cost you?" inquired Norton, cynically.
"None of your business," laughed Manville. "The Transcontinental pays its own bills."
"But the business is some of my business. If this boy of Jarnagan's goes out and cuts the rate—"
"He's not going to cut the rate."
"Well, even if he doesn't, he's liable to give us a whole lot of trouble. He won't know any better than to tell the truth—first, last, and all the time. Moreover, if—as I suspect—he's down here on his own hook, he'll make capital out of that."
"What if he does?"
"Why, he'll win 'em right from the start—if I know anything about human nature."
Manville was as optimistic as he was unscrupulous, and laughed at the idea of being worsted by a boy.
"You're rattled this morning, Norty," he said complacently. "If you're going to lose any sleep about it, we'll have to get rid of Tom Jarnagan's proxy."
"How?" asked Norton.
Manville suggested a plan, but his ally shook his head.
"He wouldn't have a drop of Tom Jarnagan's blood in him if he could be chased away by any such antediluvian trick as that."
"Don't you believe it," Manville argued; "he'd jump at the chance."
Norton hesitated. Unlike Manville, he was not altogether conscienceless, but his chief weakness lay in trying to be all things to all men; so he said:
"All right—if we have to. But it's a low-down trick to play on a boy."
"Oh, you be hanged!" laughed Manville; and then they went out together to see what Tom would do first.
In the meantime Tom had walked off some of his wrath, and had inquired his way to Judge Sloan's house. When he found it, he passed it once to reconnoiter, again to get his courage well in hand, and a third time to see if the judge, was still sitting at his desk in the small office abutting upon the street. Then he went in.
"Good morning, my boy; what can I do for you?" said the judge, hospitably.
The greeting was a flat contradiction to Aaron Simpson's qualified recommendation, and Tom thought that he had fallen upon a lucky moment; wherefore he proceeded to make good use of it in the manner foretold by Norton. At the conclusion of the unbusiness-like introduction the judge smiled approvingly.
"Trying to help your father, are you? Well, now, that's what I like to see. I wish there were more sons like you;" and the good man's eyes dimmed when he thought of his own first-born, whose memory was all the dearer to him because of the lad's devotion to his father.
"Don't," said Tom, humbly. "I don't deserve any credit. If I hadn't been too careless for anything, father would have been here himself three days ago;" and he went on bravely and told the story of the delayed letter.
The judge listened sympathetically, and refused to withdraw his praise.
"That makes it all the more creditable—that you should try to set the matter right," he said; "but I'm afraid you have come too late. We had given your father up, and then Mr. Manville came and proposed to treat us so nicely that we have about concluded to go with him."
"Is it a promise?" asked Tom, anxiously.
"Not quite that, though he may so consider it. His offer to give us through colonist-sleepers from Richville is the strong point in his favor. Your father said he couldn't do that."
"Neither can Mr. Manville," said Tom, decidedly.
"How do you know?" asked the judge.
"I help my father in the office, and there has been a lot of correspondence lately about that very thing. All the lines have been doing it, but now they've agreed not to. There is a notice out to all agents—wait a minute; maybe I've got it here." Tom unrolled his bundle, and happily found the circular in question.
The judge read it with a little wrinkle coming and going between his eyebrows—a danger signal that more than one over-anxious attorney had disregarded to his sorrow.
"H-m, promises what he can't perform, eh? That looks like bad faith, to begin with. What could your line do for us?"
Tom opened his mouth and told a truthful tale which would have made a professional solicitor weep for the very artlessness of it. Certainly no intending traveler had ever heard the advantages and disadvantages of a competing route set forth with such impartial and conscientious minuteness of detail. When Tom ran out of facts, the judge was smiling again.
"Could you repeat that as often as need be?" he asked.
"Why, yes," said Tom.
"Very well; I'll give you a list of our members, and you can start out. If you'll go around and tell as straight a story to the others, there is a fair chance for you yet. I haven't heard so much self-evident truth since we began to talk the thing up."
"Thank you; if you'll give me the names I'll start out right now."
The judge opened a drawer and found the list. "You'll have to inquire your way around; you couldn't remember all the directions if I gave them to you. You say you've met Simpson?"
"Yes, sir."
"He and Olestrom can direct you in their neighborhoods. If you could get the people together— I'll tell you what to do: talk the thing up, and call a meeting for to-morrow night—say at half-past seven, at the school-house near Simpson's. Then we can go over the whole matter, and settle the question of the route definitely."
Tom paled at the bare thought of addressing a public meeting. "Would—would I have to talk?" he stammered.
"Certainly; but that's what you're here for, isn't it?"
"Ye-es; but I never thought of having to talk to more than one at a time. I don't believe I can ever do it."
"Oh, I guess you can; your audience will be friendly. You will meet nearly all of our people between this and to-morrow night, if you fly around."
Tom took the hint and gathered up his papers.
"May I say you told me to call the meeting?" he asked, with his hand on the door-knob.
"Certainly, if you think it will help you. Good-by; come to me when I can do anything for you."
Tom went his way with his heart afire, sought out a livery stable, and hired a horse and buggy for the day. Then he made his first mistake by unfolding the plan of the meeting to the half-dozen members of the colony who lived in the village.
At eleven o'clock he took the road for Aaron Simpson's, meaning to see Kate on the way; and there was nothing in the pleasant drive to The Maples to suggest that he was like one who has set a prairie afire behind him.
But Kate saw the danger as soon as he had finished recounting the doings of the morning.
"It's going on famously, Tom, but there is just one thing I wish you hadn't done."
"What's that?"
"Telling those people in the village first. They'll talk, and Mr. Manville will have just that much more time in which to checkmate us. You ought to have left them till the last."
"Why, of course I ought!" said Tom, disgusted at his own lack of foresight. "I'm no good on the face of the earth. What do you suppose he'll do?"
"I don't know that. What would father do in such a case?"
"Huh! that's easy. He'd just hustle around and get 'em all to put up some money; then, when they went to the meeting, they'd have to vote the way they'd paid."
"Well?" said Kate, smiling.
"Pity's sake! that's just what Mr. Manville will do! And I can't stop him."
"I think you can if you manage it right. Of course the people wouldn't pay money to you, but how would it do to ask them to go to the meeting prepared to make a deposit of ten dollars a ticket after they have chosen their route? You could caution them against making any promises or paying any money before that time."
Tom looked disgusted again.
"Say, Kittie, we've got this thing just turned around. You ought to take the horse and buggy, and let me stay here and hide my head awhile. Why, I can't seem to see two inches beyond my nose!"
Kate laughed and pushed him toward the steps. "Yes, you can; only you have been too busy to think—and too worried; I've had nothing else to do all the morning. But you mustn't lose any more time; you have a lot of people to see and talk to between now and to-morrow evening."
Tom ran down the walk, unhitched his horse, and was soon out of sight of The Maples, driving rapidly along the smooth lake-shore road, and keeping a sharp lookout for a big white house on a knoll to the right.
He found Aaron Simpson at home, submitted the judge's original proposition, with Kate's amendment, and secured the farmer's hearty approval. Nay, more. Simpson made him stay to dinner, and afterward went the round of the neighborhood with him, introducing him to the other members of the colony, and thus expediting the affair, so that by four o'clock Tom had interviewed all of Simpson's contingent.
"That's the last one of my crowd," said the farmer, as Tom cramped the buggy and turned away from John Hathaway's gate. "There's another little gatherin' of 'em round on the far side of the lake, but you can drive over there to-morrow. Now we'll go and see Olestrom."
They found the Swedish farmer, but he was disposed to be impracticable. Without saying that he did not approve the plan, he made many vague difficulties; and neither Tom nor Simpson could fathom his motives.
"Aye bane gone to see 'bout dem t'ings feerst," was all he would say; and while he did not promise to come to the meeting himself, he offered to notify his Scandinavian neighbors.
Tom accepted the offer thankfully; but when they were clear of the house, Simpson shook his head.
"I dunno 's I'd resk too much on that," he said. "Manville's been out to see Olestrom two or three times, and I'm afraid they're up to something together."
"Maybe I'd better go around and see the people myself," Tom suggested.
"Maybe you had; leastways, 't won't do no harm if you come out to-morrow in the afternoon to see if he's been round. B'lieve I'd do that, if I was you. Going straight back to town now?" They had pulled up at the Simpson gate.
"Over to Mrs. Cartwright's, and then to town," replied Tom, whose slip of the morning made him determined to keep in close touch thereafter with his "advisory committee."
"All right; and in the morning you can chase round to the north shore and see the folks over there. Japhet Rutherford's the man."
Now, Rutherford is not an uncommon name, but its pronunciations are various, and Aaron Simpson's rendering of it was "Roothf'd." None the less, Tom understood,—or thought he did,—made a note of the name as he had heard it, and drove back to The Maples.
Kate was sitting on the veranda when the buggy came in sight, and she went down to the gate to save Tom the trouble of hitching. When he had made his report of the campaign up to date, he asked what he should do next.
"The idea!—as if I could tell you how many breaths to draw!" she retorted. "If you can't find anything else to do, you might go to the hotel and study up your speech for to-morrow night."
"Don't!" begged Tom, pathetically. "That's just where I'm going to fall down hard. I know I shall be deaf, dumb, and blind. I can feel the symptoms coming on already."
"Nonsense!" said Kate; and then she thought of something else. "I've heard father say the first thing he always does in a new place is to get acquainted with the local agent. Have you done that yet?"
"No; I'll go straight and do it now, before supper—there is just about time. Good-by; you may not see me again till to-morrow noon."
He drove on, and midway between Mrs. Cartwright's and the village met a young man and a young woman in a buggy, who bowed to him, as the custom of country neighborhoods dictates. Tom returned the salutation, wondering who they were and how they knew him. The young man was also puzzled, but it was for another reason.
"You don't know Tom Jarnagan of the C. E. & W., do you, Nellie?" he said to his sister, some minutes later.
"No," she replied. "Why?"
"Because that boy we just passed is enough like him to be Tom himself, gone young again. By the way, that reminds me. I had a wire from Fred Cargill, yesterday, asking me to do what I could to help the C. E. & W. on this Utah crowd. It seems that Jarnagan had to go to California at the last minute, and so couldn't come down to look after it himself."
"But you have to be neutral, haven't you?"
"Oh, yes; that's the supposition; but I always make it a point to help my friends when I can. Jarnagan is a man I can respect, and that's more than I can say of Manville."
The horse turned of its own accord up to the gate of The Maples, and Mr. Henry Haworth, the local agent whom Tom was on his way to seek, sprang from the buggy and helped his sister to alight. Kate was at the open parlor window when they came up, and Mrs. Cartwright's greeting proclaimed them relatives of hers. So much Kate overheard, but it was not until after supper that she learned anything more about the new-comers. Then she was asked to come down to the parlor to meet the landlady's nephew and niece from Richville.
She went willingly. And after the commonplaces the young man said:
"I beg your pardon, but did I understand your name correctly—is it Jarnagan?"
"Yes," replied Kate, wondering if she had stumbled upon an acquaintance of her father's.
"J-a-r-n-a-g-a-n?"
Kate laughed. "You know my father, or you couldn't spell the name. You'd laugh to see how many of his correspondents make i's and e's of the a's."
"I do know him—I'm the local agent at Richville. I was just saying to Eleanor as we drove up that I was sorry he couldn't be here to secure the Utah colony."
"He couldn't come, but his 'proxy' is here," said Kate, smiling. "My brother Tom is in Richville, and he is trying to do what he can in father's absence."
Mr. Haworth and his sister exchanged glances of intelligence. "I think we met him as we were coming out," he said. "He was in a buggy, driving to town."
"Yes; he was on his way to get acquainted with you. He wished to tell you what he is doing, and to ask your advice."
"What is he doing?" inquired the agent.
Kate seized the opportunity to make another friend for the cause, and told the story of the campaign as far as it had progressed. When she concluded, the agent drew a copy of the "Richville Argus" from his pocket and passed it to her with his finger on a marked item.
"Did either of you see that?" he asked.
Kate read the paragraph, which was a mention of heavy storms in the West, catching her breath with a little exclamation of dismay at the final sentence, which ran thus:
- The railroads have suffered severely, and the Colorado East & West, being unable to run its trains, has arranged to have the Transcontinental carry its Utah business until further notice.
"Oh, dear, dear!" Kate lamented. "Isn't that perfectly dreadful? And Tom doesn't know a thing about it! What shall we do?"
"Wait a minute, and I'll see if I can't get your brother by telephone," said the young man, and he went into the hall to try. Five minutes later he came back, and Kate saw fresh anxiety and perplexity in his face.
"There is something wrong somewhere," he said gravely; "I have just learned that your brother has left town without taking his baggage or paying his hotel bill."