A Deal in Wheat and Other Stories of the New and Old West Read online

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  A DEAL IN WHEAT

  And Other Stories Of The New And Old West

  By FRANK NORRIS

  _Illustrated by Remington, Leyendecker, Hitchcock and Hooper_

  1903

  "'Sell A Thousand May At One-Fifty,' Vociferated The BearBroker"]

  CONTENTS

  A Deal in Wheat

  The Wife of Chino

  A Bargain with Peg-Leg

  The Passing of Cock-Eye Blacklock

  A Memorandum of Sudden Death

  Two Hearts That Beat as One

  The Dual Personality of Slick Dick Nickerson

  The Ship That Saw a Ghost

  The Ghost in the Crosstrees

  The Riding of Felipe

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  "'Sell a Thousand May at One-Fifty,' Vociferated the Bear Broker"

  Caught in the Circle. The last stand of three troopers and a scoutovertaken by a band of hostile Indians.

  "'Ere's 'Ell to Pay!"

  "'My Curse Is on Her Who Next Kisses You'"

  A DEAL IN WHEAT

  I. THE BEAR--WHEAT AT SIXTY-TWO

  As Sam Lewiston backed the horse into the shafts of his backboard andbegan hitching the tugs to the whiffletree, his wife came out from thekitchen door of the house and drew near, and stood for some time at thehorse's head, her arms folded and her apron rolled around them. For along moment neither spoke. They had talked over the situation so longand so comprehensively the night before that there seemed to be nothingmore to say.

  The time was late in the summer, the place a ranch in southwesternKansas, and Lewiston and his wife were two of a vast population offarmers, wheat growers, who at that moment were passing through acrisis--a crisis that at any moment might culminate in tragedy. Wheatwas down to sixty-six.

  At length Emma Lewiston spoke.

  "Well," she hazarded, looking vaguely out across the ranch toward thehorizon, leagues distant; "well, Sam, there's always that offer ofbrother Joe's. We can quit--and go to Chicago--if the worst comes."

  "And give up!" exclaimed Lewiston, running the lines through the torets."Leave the ranch! Give up! After all these years!"

  His wife made no reply for the moment. Lewiston climbed into thebuckboard and gathered up the lines. "Well, here goes for the last try,Emmie," he said. "Good-by, girl. Maybe things will look better in townto-day."

  "Maybe," she said gravely. She kissed her husband good-by and stood forsome time looking after the buckboard traveling toward the town in amoving pillar of dust.

  "I don't know," she murmured at length; "I don't know just how we'regoing to make out."

  When he reached town, Lewiston tied the horse to the iron railing infront of the Odd Fellows' Hall, the ground floor of which was occupiedby the post-office, and went across the street and up the stairway of abuilding of brick and granite--quite the most pretentious structure ofthe town--and knocked at a door upon the first landing. The door wasfurnished with a pane of frosted glass, on which, in gold letters, wasinscribed, "Bridges & Co., Grain Dealers."

  Bridges himself, a middle-aged man who wore a velvet skull-cap and whowas smoking a Pittsburg stogie, met the farmer at the counter and thetwo exchanged perfunctory greetings.

  "Well," said Lewiston, tentatively, after awhile.

  "Well, Lewiston," said the other, "I can't take that wheat of yours atany better than sixty-two."

  "Sixty-_two_."

  "It's the Chicago price that does it, Lewiston. Truslow is bearing thestuff for all he's worth. It's Truslow and the bear clique that stickthe knife into us. The price broke again this morning. We've just got awire."

  "Good heavens," murmured Lewiston, looking vaguely from side to side."That--that ruins me. I _can't_ carry my grain any longer--what withstorage charges and--and--Bridges, I don't see just how I'm going tomake out. Sixty-two cents a bushel! Why, man, what with this and withthat it's cost me nearly a dollar a bushel to raise that wheat, and nowTruslow--"

  He turned away abruptly with a quick gesture of infinite discouragement.

  He went down the stairs, and making his way to where his buckboard washitched, got in, and, with eyes vacant, the reins slipping and slidingin his limp, half-open hands, drove slowly back to the ranch. His wifehad seen him coming, and met him as he drew up before the barn.

  "Well?" she demanded.

  "Emmie," he said as he got out of the buckboard, laying his arm acrossher shoulder, "Emmie, I guess we'll take up with Joe's offer. We'll goto Chicago. We're cleaned out!"

  II. THE BULL--WHEAT AT A DOLLAR-TEN

  ...----_and said Party of the Second Part further covenants and agrees tomerchandise such wheat in foreign ports, it being understood and agreedbetween the Party of the First Part and the Party of the Second Partthat the wheat hereinbefore mentioned is released and sold to the Partyof the Second Part for export purposes only, and not for consumption ordistribution within the boundaries of the United States of America or ofCanada_.

  "Now, Mr. Gates, if you will sign for Mr. Truslow I guess that'll beall," remarked Hornung when he had finished reading.

  Hornung affixed his signature to the two documents and passed them overto Gates, who signed for his principal and client, Truslow--or, as hehad been called ever since he had gone into the fight against Hornung'scorner--the Great Bear. Hornung's secretary was called in and witnessedthe signatures, and Gates thrust the contract into his Gladstone bag andstood up, smoothing his hat.

  "You will deliver the warehouse receipts for the grain," began Gates.

  "I'll send a messenger to Truslow's office before noon," interruptedHornung. "You can pay by certified check through the Illinois Trustpeople."

  When the other had taken himself off, Hornung sat for some momentsgazing abstractedly toward his office windows, thinking over the wholematter. He had just agreed to release to Truslow, at the rate of onedollar and ten cents per bushel, one hundred thousand out of the twomillion and odd bushels of wheat that he, Hornung, controlled, oractually owned. And for the moment he was wondering if, after all, hehad done wisely in not goring the Great Bear to actual financial death.He had made him pay one hundred thousand dollars. Truslow was good forthis amount. Would it not have been better to have put a prohibitivefigure on the grain and forced the Bear into bankruptcy? True, Hornungwould then be without his enemy's money, but Truslow would have beeneliminated from the situation, and that--so Hornung told himself--wasalways a consummation most devoutly, strenuously and diligently to bestriven for. Truslow once dead was dead, but the Bear was never moredangerous than when desperate.

  "But so long as he can't get _wheat_," muttered Hornung at the end ofhis reflections, "he can't hurt me. And he can't get it. That I _know_."

  For Hornung controlled the situation. So far back as the February ofthat year an "unknown bull" had been making his presence felt on thefloor of the Board of Trade. By the middle of March the commercialreports of the daily press had begun to speak of "the powerful bullclique"; a few weeks later that legendary condition of affairs impliedand epitomized in the magic words "Dollar Wheat" had been attained, andby the first of April, when the price had been boosted to one dollar andten cents a bushel, Hornung had disclosed his hand, and in place of mererumours, the definite and authoritative news that May wheat had beencornered in the Chicago pit went flashing around the world fromLiverpool to Odessa and from Duluth to Buenos Ayres.

  It was--so the veteran operators were persuaded--Truslow himself who hadmade Hornung's corner possible. The Great Bear had for once over-reachedhimself, and,
believing himself all-powerful, had hammered the pricejust the fatal fraction too far down. Wheat had gone to sixty-two--forthe time, and under the circumstances, an abnormal price.

  When the reaction came it was tremendous. Hornung saw his chance, seizedit, and in a few months had turned the tables, had cornered the product,and virtually driven the bear clique out of the pit.

  On the same day that the delivery of the hundred thousand bushels wasmade to Truslow, Hornung met his broker at his lunch club.

  "Well," said the latter, "I see you let go that line of stuff toTruslow."

  Hornung nodded; but the broker added:

  "Remember, I was against it from the very beginning. I know we'vecleared up over a hundred thou'. I would have fifty times preferred tohave lost twice that and _smashed Truslow dead_. Bet you what you likehe makes us pay for it somehow."

  "Huh!" grunted his principal. "How about insurance, and warehousecharges, and carrying expenses on that lot? Guess we'd have had to paythose, too, if we'd held on."

  But the other put up his chin, unwilling to be persuaded. "I won't sleepeasy," he declared, "till Truslow is busted."

  III. THE PIT

  Just as Going mounted the steps on the edge of the pit the great gongstruck, a roar of a hundred voices developed with the swiftness ofsuccessive explosions, the rush of a hundred men surging downward to thecentre of the pit filled the air with the stamp and grind of feet, ahundred hands in eager strenuous gestures tossed upward from out thebrown of the crowd, the official reporter in his cage on the margin ofthe pit leaned far forward with straining ear to catch the opening bid,and another day of battle was begun.

  Since the sale of the hundred thousand bushels of wheat to Truslow the"Hornung crowd" had steadily shouldered the price higher until on thisparticular morning it stood at one dollar and a half. That was Hornung'sprice. No one else had any grain to sell.

  But not ten minutes after the opening, Going was surprised out of allcountenance to hear shouted from the other side of the pit these words:

  "Sell May at one-fifty."

  Going was for the moment touching elbows with Kimbark on one side andwith Merriam on the other, all three belonging to the "Hornung crowd."Their answering challenge of "_Sold_" was as the voice of one man. Theydid not pause to reflect upon the strangeness of the circumstance. (Thatwas for afterward.) Their response to the offer was as unconscious, asreflex action and almost as rapid, and before the pit was well aware ofwhat had happened the transaction of one thousand bushels was down uponGoing's trading-card and fifteen hundred dollars had changed hands. Buthere was a marvel--the whole available supply of wheat cornered, Hornungmaster of the situation, invincible, unassailable; yet behold a manwilling to sell, a Bear bold enough to raise his head.

  "That was Kennedy, wasn't it, who made that offer?" asked Kimbark, asGoing noted down the trade--"Kennedy, that new man?"

  "Yes; who do you suppose he's selling for; who's willing to go short atthis stage of the game?"

  "Maybe he ain't short."

  "Short! Great heavens, man; where'd he get the stuff?"

  "Blamed if I know. We can account for every handful of May. Steady! Oh,there he goes again."

  "Sell a thousand May at one-fifty," vociferated the bear-broker,throwing out his hand, one finger raised to indicate the number of"contracts" offered. This time it was evident that he was attacking theHornung crowd deliberately, for, ignoring the jam of traders that swepttoward him, he looked across the pit to where Going and Kimbark wereshouting _"Sold! Sold!"_ and nodded his head.

  A second time Going made memoranda of the trade, and either the Hornungholdings were increased by two thousand bushels of May wheat or theHornung bank account swelled by at least three thousand dollars of someunknown short's money.

  Of late--so sure was the bull crowd of its position--no one had eventhought of glancing at the inspection sheet on the bulletin board. Butnow one of Going's messengers hurried up to him with the announcementthat this sheet showed receipts at Chicago for that morning oftwenty-five thousand bushels, and not credited to Hornung. Some one hadgot hold of a line of wheat overlooked by the "clique" and was dumpingit upon them.

  "Wire the Chief," said Going over his shoulder to Merriam. This onestruggled out of the crowd, and on a telegraph blank scribbled:

  "Strong bear movement--New man--Kennedy--Selling in lots of fivecontracts--Chicago receipts twenty-five thousand."

  The message was despatched, and in a few moments the answer came back,laconic, of military terseness:

  "Support the market."

  And Going obeyed, Merriam and Kimbark following, the new broker fairlythrowing the wheat at them in thousand-bushel lots.

  "Sell May at 'fifty; sell May; sell May." A moment's indecision, aninstant's hesitation, the first faint suggestion of weakness, and themarket would have broken under them. But for the better part of fourhours they stood their ground, taking all that was offered, in constantcommunication with the Chief, and from time to time stimulated andsteadied by his brief, unvarying command:

  "Support the market."

  At the close of the session they had bought in the twenty-five thousandbushels of May. Hornung's position was as stable as a rock, and theprice closed even with the opening figure--one dollar and a half.

  But the morning's work was the talk of all La Salle Street. Who was backof the raid?

  What was the meaning of this unexpected selling? For weeks the pittrading had been merely nominal. Truslow, the Great Bear, from whom themost serious attack might have been expected, had gone to his countryseat at Geneva Lake, in Wisconsin, declaring himself to be out of themarket entirely. He went bass-fishing every day.

  IV. THE BELT LINE

  On a certain day toward the middle of the month, at a time when themysterious Bear had unloaded some eighty thousand bushels upon Hornung,a conference was held in the library of Hornung's home. His brokerattended it, and also a clean-faced, bright-eyed individual whose nameof Cyrus Ryder might have been found upon the pay-roll of a ratherwell-known detective agency. For upward of half an hour after theconference began the detective spoke, the other two listeningattentively, gravely.

  "Then, last of all," concluded Ryder, "I made out I was a hobo, andbegan stealing rides on the Belt Line Railroad. Know the road? It justcircles Chicago. Truslow owns it. Yes? Well, then I began to catch on. Inoticed that cars of certain numbers--thirty-one nought thirty-four,thirty-two one ninety--well, the numbers don't matter, but anyhow, thesecars were always switched onto the sidings by Mr. Truslow's mainelevator D soon as they came in. The wheat was shunted in, and they werepulled out again. Well, I spotted one car and stole a ride on her. Say,look here, _that car went right around the city on the Belt, and cameback to D again, and the same wheat in her all the time_. The grain wasreinspected--it was raw, I tell you--and the warehouse receipts made outjust as though the stuff had come in from Kansas or Iowa."

  "The same wheat all the time!" interrupted Hornung.

  "The same wheat--your wheat, that you sold to Truslow."

  "Great snakes!" ejaculated Hornung's broker. "Truslow never took itabroad at all."

  "Took it abroad! Say, he's just been running it around Chicago, like thesupers in 'Shenandoah,' round an' round, so you'd think it was a newlot, an' selling it back to you again."

  "No wonder we couldn't account for so much wheat."

  "Bought it from us at one-ten, and made us buy it back--our ownwheat--at one-fifty."

  Hornung and his broker looked at each other in silence for a moment.Then all at once Hornung struck the arm of his chair with his fist andexploded in a roar of laughter. The broker stared for one bewilderedmoment, then followed his example.

  "Sold! Sold!" shouted Hornung almost gleefully. "Upon my soul it's asgood as a Gilbert and Sullivan show. And we--Oh, Lord! Billy, shake onit, and hats off to my distinguished friend, Truslow. He'll be Presidentsome day. Hey! What? Prosecute him? Not I."

  "He's done us out of a neat hatful of dollars for a
ll that," observedthe broker, suddenly grave.

  "Billy, it's worth the price."

  "We've got to make it up somehow."

  "Well, tell you what. We were going to boost the price to oneseventy-five next week, and make that our settlement figure."

  "Can't do it now. Can't afford it."

  "No. Here; we'll let out a big link; we'll put wheat at two dollars, andlet it go at that."

  "Two it is, then," said the broker.

  V. THE BREAD LINE

  The street was very dark and absolutely deserted. It was a district onthe "South Side," not far from the Chicago River, given up largely towholesale stores, and after nightfall was empty of all life. The echoesslept but lightly hereabouts, and the slightest footfall, the faintestnoise, woke them upon the instant and sent them clamouring up and downthe length of the pavement between the iron shuttered fronts. The onlylight visible came from the side door of a certain "Vienna" bakery,where at one o'clock in the morning loaves of bread were given away toany who should ask. Every evening about nine o'clock the outcasts beganto gather about the side door. The stragglers came in rapidly, and theline--the "bread line," as it was called--began to form. By midnight itwas usually some hundred yards in length, stretching almost the entirelength of the block.

  Toward ten in the evening, his coat collar turned up against the finedrizzle that pervaded the air, his hands in his pockets, his elbowsgripping his sides, Sam Lewiston came up and silently took his place atthe end of the line.

  Unable to conduct his farm upon a paying basis at the time when Truslow,the "Great Bear," had sent the price of grain down to sixty-two cents abushel, Lewiston had turned over his entire property to his creditors,and, leaving Kansas for good, had abandoned farming, and had left hiswife at her sister's boarding-house in Topeka with the understandingthat she was to join him in Chicago so soon as he had found a steadyjob. Then he had come to Chicago and had turned workman. His brother Joeconducted a small hat factory on Archer Avenue, and for a time he foundthere a meager employment. But difficulties had occurred, times werebad, the hat factory was involved in debts, the repealing of a certainimport duty on manufactured felt overcrowded the home market with cheapBelgian and French products, and in the end his brother had assigned andgone to Milwaukee.

  Thrown out of work, Lewiston drifted aimlessly about Chicago, frompillar to post, working a little, earning here a dollar, there a dime,but always sinking, sinking, till at last the ooze of the lowest bottomdragged at his feet and the rush of the great ebb went over him andengulfed him and shut him out from the light, and a park bench becamehis home and the "bread line" his chief makeshift of subsistence.

  He stood now in the enfolding drizzle, sodden, stupefied with fatigue.Before and behind stretched the line. There was no talking. There was nosound. The street was empty. It was so still that the passing of acable-car in the adjoining thoroughfare grated like prolonged rollingexplosions, beginning and ending at immeasurable distances. The drizzledescended incessantly. After a long time midnight struck.

  There was something ominous and gravely impressive in this interminableline of dark figures, close-pressed, soundless; a crowd, yet absolutelystill; a close-packed, silent file, waiting, waiting in the vastdeserted night-ridden street; waiting without a word, without amovement, there under the night and under the slow-moving mists of rain.

  Few in the crowd were professional beggars. Most of them were workmen,long since out of work, forced into idleness by long-continued "hardtimes," by ill luck, by sickness. To them the "bread line" was agodsend. At least they could not starve. Between jobs here in the endwas something to hold them up--a small platform, as it were, above thesweep of black water, where for a moment they might pause and takebreath before the plunge.

  The period of waiting on this night of rain seemed endless to thosesilent, hungry men; but at length there was a stir. The line moved. Theside door opened. Ah, at last! They were going to hand out the bread.

  But instead of the usual white-aproned under-cook with his crowdedhampers there now appeared in the doorway a new man--a young fellow wholooked like a bookkeeper's assistant. He bore in his hand a placard,which he tacked to the outside of the door. Then he disappeared withinthe bakery, locking the door after him.

  A shudder of poignant despair, an unformed, inarticulate sense ofcalamity, seemed to run from end to end of the line. What had happened?Those in the rear, unable to read the placard, surged forward, a senseof bitter disappointment clutching at their hearts.

  The line broke up, disintegrated into a shapeless throng--a throng thatcrowded forward and collected in front of the shut door whereon theplacard was affixed. Lewiston, with the others, pushed forward. On theplacard he read these words:

  "Owing to the fact that the price of grain has been increased to twodollars a bushel, there will be no distribution of bread from thisbakery until further notice."

  Lewiston turned away, dumb, bewildered. Till morning he walked thestreets, going on without purpose, without direction. But now at lasthis luck had turned. Overnight the wheel of his fortunes had creaked andswung upon its axis, and before noon he had found a job in thestreet-cleaning brigade. In the course of time he rose to be firstshift-boss, then deputy inspector, then inspector, promoted to thedignity of driving in a red wagon with rubber tires and drawing a salaryinstead of mere wages. The wife was sent for and a new start made.

  But Lewiston never forgot. Dimly he began to see the significance ofthings. Caught once in the cogs and wheels of a great and terribleengine, he had seen--none better--its workings. Of all the men who hadvainly stood in the "bread line" on that rainy night in early summer,he, perhaps, had been the only one who had struggled up to the surfaceagain. How many others had gone down in the great ebb? Grim question; hedared not think how many.

  He had seen the two ends of a great wheat operation--a battle betweenBear and Bull. The stories (subsequently published in the city's press)of Truslow's countermove in selling Hornung his own wheat, supplied theunseen section. The farmer--he who raised the wheat--was ruined upon onehand; the working-man--he who consumed it--was ruined upon the other.But between the two, the great operators, who never saw the wheat theytraded in, bought and sold the world's food, gambled in the nourishmentof entire nations, practised their tricks, their chicanery and obliqueshifty "deals," were reconciled in their differences, and went onthrough their appointed way, jovial, contented, enthroned, andunassailable.