14 In the Barn

Winter advanced, a light snow fell, melted under a warm wind, and then the cold came again. Tobacco-grower and tobacco-buyer were still arrayed against each other. The “breaks” in Groveton were almost deserted, and thousands of hogsheads stood in the barns, unsold. The raiders still rode at night, warning, and, now and then, doing an act of violence. Scarcely one was punished. As usual, where men act regardless of the law, all the hard characters in the region crowded in to have a share in the “fun”, and a cause, which, in the beginning, had much to justify it, dropped steadily toward a lower plane. Judge Braxton, a man of great perception and infinite sympathies, shook his head sadly more than once.

But Groveton had ample compensation for the temporary loss of her tobacco trade. Although the weather was cold the lack of snow permitted work on the new railroad, and it moved with great speed toward completion. The capital that did not come from Mr. Newton in Chicago came in abundance from New York. In truth, capital was now eager because the riches were disclosed. The veins of coal were thicker and the coal was of higher grade than was expected, new oil strikes were made throughout the narrow valley that ran from Pleasantville deep into the mountains, and the oil was of the highest illuminating variety.

The pipe line was completed, and oil shooting up from the ground at Pleasantville discharged itself into a tank in Bayonne opposite New York. But the little metropolis of Groveton remained the seat of the industry in Kentucky, the point from which it was financed and controlled, and far into the winter they were erecting new buildings to house the increased population. Money became more plentiful, and Groveton began to think in quarters where formerly it had thought in dimes.

Harry Beauchamp made an involuntary, but, by no means, small, profit. His mind was concentrated on his newspaper, but he had taken both oil and coal leases, largely to oblige Tom Kidd, and for the sake of Groveton’s general “pull-together”. Suddenly these leases became of great value. Men with money besieged him, fairly begging him to take their dollars and give them his leases. When he considered the total amount they offered it amazed him. He had at first a great impulse to hold on, and get twice as much, and then a second impulse to sell to them as soon as possible for fear he should never get such offers again. His third feeling was a surging one of relief, freedom and joy. He realized the tremendous meaning of financial independence, the power to do as one pleased, the ability to carry out an honorable wish. But he would not sell until he consulted Tom Kidd, who, he felt, had turned upon him this sudden stream of wealth, riches that had come to him without the asking, and of which he was yet a little afraid.

Tom Kidd came into his office, at last, a big, square-chinned fairy godmother in a rough corduroy suit, high boots, and a huge gray overcoat that shed rain and snow alike. He and Harry shook hands warmly, and the best place by the office stove was given to him.

“Tom,” said Harry, “I’m offered as much as forty thousand dollars profit for those oil and coal leases around Pleasantville. What must I do?”

“Sell. They may be worth twice as much next year, but enough of a good thing is enough. Besides, you’re a newspaper proprietor and editor. Take your luck, and stick to your business.”

Within a week all the sales were completed and the money paid. Harry Beauchamp considered himself a rich man. He went to the bank of Christopher Lucas, where the banker was at ease in his arm chair, thoughtfully regarding the opposite wall.

“Sit down, Harry,” he said. “How much money do you want today?”

Harry smiled.

“None,” he replied. “I’ve come to pay the balance on my press.

“Sold out your oil and coal leases?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I was afraid you wouldn’t. The wise financier is the man who never tries to make too much out of one thing. What are you going to do with the money?”

“Enlarge the Herald in every way.”

“Good again. And some will be left over. Put that in first class state or city bonds. They pay dividends, and they are almost like cash. If you need money, at any time, you can get it on ’em, and get it quickly.”

“I’ll do it,” said Harry.

When he returned to his office he summoned Jim Steptoe. Jim came, combing his long red whiskers with three fingers of his left hand.

“Jim,” said Harry, “what do you think of the Husted corner?”

“That place at Main and Race streets, the one that the heirs are holdin’? Why, it’s the best spot in town for a business block?”

“Right you are, and there are nothing but shanties on it now. Well, I’m going to buy it before tomorrow morning, and before a year has passed the Groveton Herald building will be standing upon it, a four-story pressed brick structure, trimmed with white stone, our present press, and a color press in addition, running at great speed, in the basement, the rooms on the upper two floors to be rented as offices. What I want to know of you, Mr. James Steptoe, is, will you take the position of Superintendent of Motive Power, Manager of the Renting Department and Custodian of the Keys in the new building, at an increase of thirty dollars per month in salary, the increase to take effect the day the Herald moves into its new and palatial quarters?”

Jim gasped, then his face fell.

“Don’t make fun o’ me that way, Mr. Beauchamp,” he said. “It ain’t right, I’ve told you before, to take a man up so high, an’ then let him drop all in a heap.”

“But, Jim, I’m not letting you drop. I’m keeping you up high. I’m in dead hard earnest. My offer is meant.”

The light came back to Jim Steptoe’s eyes.

“Will I take it?” he said; “Will a horse eat grass? Will a boy jump at a Christmas gift? I’ll take it. I’ll run fur it. Say, Mr. Beauchamp, this lit’ry life has more money in it than I thought.”

“Then it’s settled, both your salary and your titles.”

Harry was in an exuberant good humor himself, and he rejoiced at the pleasant surprise that he had given Jim Steptoe, but he was graver about it when he went home.

“Groveton may lose some of its idyllic quality with this great rush of prosperity,” said his father. “Coal and oil do not necessarily add to the beauty of life.”

“No,” said Mrs. Leroy, but they can buy a lot of the things that make life worth living.”

Mr. Beauchamp smiled, but did not reply. He still respected and admired his robust and energetic sister-in-law. He merely gave to his son the single caution:

“Keep cool, Harry.”

These were only three words, but they had a great influence upon Harry. Externally he had been calm, but internally on fire. It was not the fever for money-making. The torch had not been set to any such flame in him. He had scarcely ever felt the desire to count possessions, but he did covet freedom and power. The power to pursue his favorite ideas, and the power to achieve them. Freedom and independence were what money meant to him, independence and freedom. But he restrained the fire that was burning so strongly within him and took counsel of coolness.

He mounted his horse once more, following a favorite habit, when he wished to think, and think hard, and rode away from Groveton. His mind was chiefly on the Herald and his plans for its enlargement, but the changes in the town forced themselves anew upon his notice. Under the energy, generated by oil and coal, Groveton had not ceased to grow through the winter. It was encroaching farther and farther upon the fields, and the pleasant music of hammers and saws came through the cold air. It was a vital, big-boned town, and he and his friends were at the heart of it. He knew this, without egotism.

He rode eastward and the bare tobacco fields hung on either flank of the road. They looked very ugly now with the frost-bitten and dying stalks scattered here and there, and the sight brought trouble to Harry. The tobacco war was not over by any means. He had been forced to endure much that winter from his “exchanges”. They had taunted him with the raid upon his own town, and they had picked every possible flaw they could in Kentucky, as he had foreseen, while overlooking bigger faults elsewhere. At least so it seemed to him.

The sight of a tobacco barn, among the leafless trees, attracted his attention, and chance provided that it should be the barn of the same man, Hicks, at which Judge Braxton had stopped earlier in the season; Harry, too, knew Hicks and he entered the barn.

Hicks and his son were prizing in a low extension of the barn. The tobacco, “fired” and cured, had now all been taken down and “stripped”. The leaves had been pulled from the stalk and tied into “hands”, each hand consisting of several leaves tied together at the ends, that is the ends that had adjoined the stalk, with another leaf. Then all the tobacco had been classified, according to quality into six classes as there would be enough for six hogsheads, and “bulked” or piled in six careful and smoothly placed heaps upon the floor. There it had lain until it got into the proper condition for prizing, and this condition was wholly dependent upon the state of the atmosphere. If the weather were too wet the damp tobacco, “in sweat”, would spoil when prized in the hogshead; if too dry it would crumble and injure the leaf. But now the weather was just right, and Hicks and his son were busy.

From a high beam overhead, projected a huge beam with a long iron screw running through it. In a slightly sunken space directly under the beam stood a tobacco hogshead, now about half full of tobacco. On the hogshead on the tobacco knelt Hicks in his stocking feet, his partially bald head bobbing up and down over the edge. His son stood by the hogshead and passed him the tobacco from a bulk a single “hand” at a time. Every hand he first ran carefully through his own hand in order to smooth out the leaves, and then he passed it to his father who laid it carefully next to another hand, like a floor-maker fitting together polished pieces of oak. When one layer of hands was placed across the hogshead, another was put on top of that, and the process was continued.

The boy did not see Harry until he entered the extension of the barn, and then he hailed him in friendly fashion. Everybody knew Mr. Beauchamp, the editor of the Herald. The elder Hicks thrust up his head from the hogshead, and repeated the salute.

“We’re gettin’ her in, Mr. Beauchamp,” he said. “It’s a big crop an’ a fine one, an’ we’re goin’ to have the price, too.”

“I see that the Band of Justice is holding out.”

“You bet it is. We’re not sellin’ to the trust, jest ez we said we wouldn’t. Judge Braxton wuz along here, a while back, when I wuz firin’ my tobacco, an’ he ’peared doubtful uv our stickin’, but we’ve stuck. I’m goin’ to have a big price fur this crop, an’ I ain’t goin’ to raise none ’t all next year.”

“Still,” said Harry, “there’s been too much violence. In fact, there should be no violence at all, and it’s been going on without much opposition. By and bye, the state authorities will be stirred up. Then, they’ll send out the militia and round up the raiders.”

“To ketch some men you’d have to comb the mountains with a fine tooth comb,” said Hicks.

“Ah,” said Harry, “so the mountaineers have been coming down and taking a hand in this business!”

“I didn’t say nothin’ uv the kind,” exclaimed Hicks hastily. “I don’t know nothin’ about these raiders. I know you’re hot ag’in ’em, Mr. ”Beauchamp, but it ’pears to me they have cause. Right thar you an’ me don’t agree. You have your opinion an’ I have mine, an’ we both stick to it.”

He ducked his head down into the tobacco hogshead, and the boy began to pass him “hands” again. Harry went out. He knew that it was useless to argue with Hicks, who was a small farmer, ignorant but stubborn, and probably under the thumb of Dave Strong. His opinions were made by those around him. Harry felt every day, with increasing conviction, the power of training and association, of “atmosphere”, in fact, and he had no criticism, not even to himself, of Hicks.

But he had drawn from Hicks a virtual acknowledgment that mountaineers—and mountaineers raised little or no tobacco—were taking part in the raiding. He had not felt any doubt of it from the first, but he could get no one to say so. He had never forgotten the bullet that whistled by his head on the night of the Groveton raid. He had believed that it was fired with malicious intent, and by one who knew the target at which it was aimed. The Mason blood leaped within him again at the thought, although the whispering of that bullet was now weeks away.

He did not turn back, but continued into the hills, riding at a brisk pace. To the right he saw the line of the new railroad, the wintry sun glinting on the rails. Yet the track itself was only a thread through the forest. Here, the aspect of the wilderness was unchanged. The hills, almost unbroken by fields, rolled away to the eastward, until they sloped up into the dim blue line of the mountains. From the point where he sat on his horse, on a crest, it seemed to be the wilderness, genuine and true, untouched by the hand of man.

The tobacco struggle, and all that pertained to it slipped suddenly from Harry’s mind. He was no believer in mental telepathy, voices from the dark or any form of superstition or half-superstition, and yet he knew that a man’s emotions will sometimes take charge of his reason. It was thus with him now. Suddenly the power, or the mysterious essence, that was to shape his life shifted from Groveton to that wilderness before him. His fate lay there, and the woods, now leafless, would see it.

Harry Beauchamp shook himself, and tried to reason his mind from its mood. He sought to trace the weather signs, preceding this misty and weird atmosphere in which he was now enveloped, but he could not discover enough to account for it. The feeling endured and he proceeded further into the wilderness, as if old voices were calling him back. He was all a Mason now, the son of Indian fighters and forest rovers.

Although it was winter and the trees were bare, the hills were very beautiful. The sky had the silvery touch that comes from cold sunshine, and the pure air was life. Ice lurked at the edges of a brook that he crossed, but brilliant bubbles broke on the surface of the water. He had not met a soul on the road, but, at last, he saw a moving spot on a far hillside, and he knew that the moving spot was made by a man and his horse. They were coming his way and it was likely that he and the man would meet in the little valley, just beyond the hill, over which he was now riding.

The road dipped down, and horse and rider were shut from his view by a crest. But when he rose again, horse and rider were still invisible. He could see all the way now and there was no side road or path. Yet they had disappeared, and the incident aroused his curiosity. It suddenly seemed to him that they were a part of the misty and weird character of the wilderness. They were a phantom horse and a phantom rider, seen for a moment, and then gone. He would not have bestowed a second thought, at another time, upon so trivial a matter, but it was his mood now to read significance in it. His eye sought everywhere for the mysterious horseman, but he did not see him. There was unbroken forest on either side of the road, and, although the leaves were gone, it was thick at a little distance with underbrush.

Harry turned his horse and rode among the trees to his right. He heard a distant sound, which he knew to be the report of a rifle shot, and there was a slight thud on the dry leaves near him. He knew that the thud had been made by a bullet, fired at very long range, a bullet almost spent, and the warlike Mason blood leaped at once in his veins. He hesitated only a moment, and then he galloped straight at the underbrush.

It was a dense growth of bushes, as high as a man’s head. Harry dismounted and searched over a wide space. But he found nothing. There was no trace of a human being, nothing to show that any one had been concealed in those bushes. The bullet beyond a doubt had struck at his feet. It was a distant shot, it was true, and it might have been fired by some careless hunter, but Harry remembered the horseman who had so suddenly disappeared and he was not convinced. Obviously the shot had not been aimed with any deadly intent, it was fired from a point too far away. Was it meant as a threat? He took it as such, and rode back to Groveton.

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