Peter Clark MacFarlane

“ The old man stormed at the brothers for taking him away from his ranch on such short notice, then listened to their exposition with amazement and freshly kindling scorn.
“And this young feller, with no more references than the way he rolls a cigarette and a half-dozen telegrams from Texas, where people lie the easiest and the politest of any place in the world, comes in here one day, and you send him out to buy wheat the next; and in weeks more you want me to sell him a piece of the mill, eh?” ”

“ Charley's expression was one of polite concern for Joe Marcy's lack of an educated perceptive faculty.
“Do you allow, Mr. Marcy, that the people up in this great, opulent country go into a sto' and ask for the cheapest? No suh!” he answered himself emphatically. “They ask for the best.”
“But,” argued Jim Marcy with remarkable honesty, “our flour's no better than anybody's else.”
“Our new-process flour,” affirmed Charles suavely and impressively, “is going to be the best flour ever made west of Omaha or Minneapolis.” ”

“ And then he added: “I'm awfully anxious to try him out on selling.”
“You can have him for just two weeks,” agreed Jim. “And then I've got something else in mind.”
“Two weeks is a plenty to decide whether I'll ever let you get him back,” taunted Joe. “If he sells as easy as he buys, there isn't wheat enough in the Valley to run us.”
“Seems as if we ought to get that salary matter fixed up when he goes out,” reflected Jim. “He's going to prove an invaluable man for us, and he's likely to reason it out and get his ideas up.”
“Yes, we ought,” said Joe earnestly. ”

“ JIM and Joe Marcy looked at each other in wonder.
“Shucks, now, Mist' Adams,” protested Charles in that soft Southern purr of his, “it's only two days since I was out to see you. Besides, I was 'lowin' to come out again before I took the road, anyhow.”
“See't you do,” glared the old man. “Don't never occur to these two young sprouts here that an old man might be lonesome,” he went on with a nod at Jim and Joe. “They're good boys, all right; they work hard; but they aint no heart in em. It takes heart in business, just the same as in love, if they could only find it out. ”

“ The consequence is that all you hard-workin' boys have to give the old man is his little thirty-six hundred a year dividends on the preferred, and every dollar you can make beyond that is your own and 'Doshy's. Fair enough, what!”
Theodosia blushed and protested,
“Oh, Uncle Zach!” she gasped.
“It's more than fair!” declared Charles, and then stopped to make some computations with a pencil on his cuff. “Guess we can stand givin' up our own stock,” he chuckled a moment later with an amused glance at the Marcy boys. “I figure we can make the new common pay fourteen per cent this year.” ”

“ He can have the stock and his own time to pay for it in—except about the salary. He can't have no more'n you boys get, four thousand dollars a year—not until he demonstrates a little more. If he's fair, he'll reconsider on that p'int.”
Both brothers looked at Charles apprehensively, but Charles rose easily to the occasion.
“If you say it isn't fair, Mist' Adams, why, it isn't fair; that's all there is to that,” he conceded with a magnificent wave of his hand as he tossed off nineteen hundred dollars a year of the salary he had modestly fixed for himself. ”

“ Adams,” argued Jim, made brash by the necessity of defending his own judgment, “there isn't a particle of doubt about the man. There can't be. He's genuineness itself.”
“That's perfectly true, Mr. Adams,” seconded Joe.
Zachariah snorted contemptuously; he thumped the desk and pressed himself in loud, peeved tones.
“Gosh dang it!” he exploded. 'Let me see this here young phenomenon. I can tell you in two minutes whether he's got free-millin' (illegible text) in him or not.”
They brought Charles in, smiling and holding out his hand. “Howdy, Mist' Adams!” he said. ”

“ Later, when Charles took the tall-hatted man for a ride round the town, Jim and Joe remained behind to pinch themselves and mull the whole thing over.
“Right there's where he sat the first time he came into the office,” ruminated Joe.
“How the devil does he do it?” queried Jim. “Just fool luck, it looks like.”
“Blamed if it is,” declared Joe. “The fellow's human; he's just naturally go0d-hearted. He warms to people, and people warm to him. Hear how he got acquainted with this Belgian flour-mill bug?” ”

“ THE telephone became busy first, and in response to a call made over it, an automobile presently appeared in the offing. Into this automobile climbed the tall gentleman in the wide hat, and was whirled to the Adams Milling Company. The gentleman, it appeared, had, in a memorandum book, the name of Joseph Marcy, secretary, and he inquired for and obtained immediate audience with that gentleman.
“My name is Clemens, suh,” announced the stranger with a kind of dignified suavity that reminded Joe instantly of some one else, “—Colonel John C. Clemens of Dallas, Texas.” ”

“ The office-boy escorted Charles to Simmons desk, but meantime (illegible text) had summoned Simmons to Jim Marcy's presence by another route, where the custodian of facts and figures was instructed to consume all the time possible in making Mr. Clemens familiar with the physical geography of the wheat district. It was because Joe Marcy was already closeted with a stenographer, and making a selective draft from his list of prominent [persons] , was shooting short, pithy telegrams at each, inviting reply at his own expense. ”

“ Whipple is and ow to go about to look for him.”
“Why, Josh is the orneriest old galoot of a Missourian that you'd meet in a million years,” explained Zachariah, talking loudly as if to cover up an emotion of some kind. “Him and me prospected them hills over there for seven years straight. Many's the time we split our last bean together. Then I took to the plains and the cattle, and later I herded the cattle into the hills and left the bench-land to the wheat, makin' money both ways. After that, bein' a covetous cuss, I built the mill to get more out of the wheat. ”

“ By him was Theodosia. Her wild-rose lips were parted in an interested smile, and she watched every movement of Charles hungrily.
“Gosh!” said Zachariah when the demonstration was over. “It aint just a flivver. Them boys are goin to make real money and keep on makin' it. Now I'm goin' to fix things so't they get what they make.”
In immediate fulfillment of this purpose, and with Theodosia still at his side, he gathered the Marcys, Charles and the two dummy directors—Simmons the bookkeeper, and Bowen the head miller—into his rarely visited office at the mill. ”

“ Zachariah's features expressed irreverent amazement and then a sort of meek comprehension.
“Her mother must have give it to her,” he decided. “Burn the wind, Charley! Burn it! I'm thirstin' for a look at her.”
During the succeeding weeks, as Charles ran in and out of town, two things claimed his particular attention. One was the Y-Six ranch—to which he went ostensibly to visit its owner. The other part of the time was spent pottering around in the laboratory with the Belgian. There was no doubt that Charles had a sort of “feel” for flour. ”

“ I brought him along with me, so's you-all could fix him up some sort of laboratory here in the mill and start him goin'. He'll get more out of a grain of wheat almost than God A'mighty put into it.”
It was somewhere during this long speech that the two Marcys, both open-mouthed now, exchanged glances, tossed every doubt over their shoulders and from that moment leaned forward, hanging on the speech of Charles Clemens, as upon words of glistering light.
“Mr. Marcy! How much flour have you-all ever made in one year?” ”

“ Yes sir—grown man cryin', and from sheer lonesomeness. Charley butts in, gets sympathetic, finds he's hungry as well as lonesome, feeds him up, lends him five dollars, and is tryin' to find out what the fellow can do so as to get him a job, when he discovers that the guy is primed to the roots of the hair with the very stuff we need to know—hating Germany so bad he's crazy to blow off her milling secrets anyway, and now so dog-grateful to Charley he wants to tell all he knows to him and to nobody else in the world. ”

“ I picked up a feller on this trip—a fellah from Belgium, one of these here scientific bugs. He was workin' in a German mill before the war, and suh, what that gentleman don't know about flour aint down in the books at all. He's got all the secrets of the German government catalogued and card-indexed in his brain. ”

“ So I gave him seven thousand dollars. 'Get plumb away from Texas,' I said. 'Get where they never heard the name of John C. Clemens, if there is such a benighted spot on earth. Get into some business where you haven't got the example and the prestige of your daddy to guide you every step of the way. Then let me see what you can do.'
The next mornin' I was good and sorry that I had talked thataway to Charles, but he took me serious. He was gone. 'Bout a week after, everybody in Texas was a-callin me on the telephone to tell me about your inquiries. ”

“ The valley's full of people now, but not one of 'em thinks of Zach Adams as anything but an old skinflint that's got more money and land than he knows what to do with, and they're all busy tryin' to pry a piece of it off of him. ”