CHAPTER IV

SIX years had wrought a wonderful change in Gate City. It had increased in size and importance. Stephen Whipple was still the only wholesale grocer of the place, and Fred Walton had become his chief assistant. He was known to be the old man’s special favorite, and was living on the footing of a son in the Whipple household.

On the day that Kenneth Galt had returned to Stafford, Fred and his employer were seated in the old man’s private office. Whipple had opened his heart to him in regard to a certain financial development which had gone against his interests. The old grocer’s pride had been wounded as it had never been wounded before. Since the starting of the business he had been specially proud of the fact that he had been able to supply the retail dealers of Gate City with the groceries consumed by their customers as cheaply as any of the far-off markets could do, even with the freight cost added.

But in competing with his rivals for the patronage of the town, an ambitious retail dealer—a certain J. B. Thorp—to cut at Whipple, who had refused him further credit, owing to Thorp’s unwillingness to meet his bills when due, began to advertise that the reason he could undersell his rivals was that he didn’t stop at home to buy his supplies. This had evoked a sharp retort in “a card” in the town papers from the offended Whipple, and it had brought out further and more sarcastic allusions from Thorp. He said that it was as plain as the nose on anybody’s face that a man could not have waxed so rich as the money king of Gate City had done except at the expense of the public, and he scored a commercial triumph by giving therewith a list of his retail prices for that day, which, on staple wares at least, were really as low as Whipple’s salesmen could give their customers at wholesale.

The publicity of the whole thing had a bad effect on the old man’s clientèle. The shrewd retailer chuckled with gratified revenge as he saw the public fairly streaming his way. The stores which were being supplied by Whipple were absolutely inactive. The clerks stood on the sidewalk ruefully regarding the human current, and, by way of amusement, laying wagers on the outgoings of Thorp’s loaded delivery wagons, each of which now bore an American flag, with a motto in big black letters: “Live and Let Live! Down with the Money God of Gate City!”

Whipple’s salesmen made their usual rounds among his patrons, only to meet with utter stagnation on every hand, and returned with long faces to report few if any sales. Consumers, quick to secure even an ephemeral advantage, were easily convinced that Thorp was working for their interests, and they stood by him.

“Oh, I reckon we can make shift some way, my boy,” the old man sighed; “for our business out of town is widening and growing; but in all my life I never was hit under the belt as bad as this, for I did want to hold my own here at home. And to think that I am done, and done good, by that measly Thorp, simply because we pinned down on him and forced him to pay up. It hurts like salt rubbed in a sore to be treated this way, after all I’ve done for the town. The boys say our best customers are paying more money than we ask right now in the Eastern markets in the effort to counteract Thorp’s trickery. Do you know, I’d draw my check this minute for ten thousand round dollars and pay it to anybody who will show me a way to crush that sneaking scamp. Put the boys on their mettle, Fred; tell ‘em I said fresh ideas are better than stale ones, and the man that helps me out of this tight hole will be well paid for his trouble.”

“I was hoping that it would die out in a few days,” said Walton, “but it has only grown worse. Thorp has got the upper hand, and the more we fight him the bigger advertisement he gets out of it. Johnston and Wells say they can’t possibly make the payment they promised this month, owing to the big slump in their sales.”

“Well, I didn’t expect it!” Whipple groaned, his head resting on his fat hand. “And the trouble is, the thing may drive many of our customers clean to the wall. Thorp would sell groceries for no profit at all for twelve months to swamp the others. The public are getting low prices, the Lord knows, but it means the ruin of regular trade and the desperation of good, energetic business men. Look here, Fred, we must down that rascal, I tell you. Start the boys to thinking. Surely among us we can turn up some plan or other.”

“I’ll do what I can, Mr. Whipple,” Walton promised, as he stood up and opened the door for the old man, who had desperately snatched his hat from its hook on the wall and was ponderously striding out.

When he had left the store, Fred called Dick Warren to him from his high stool in the counting-room. With his increased years and regular life Dick had vastly improved in appearance. He hadn’t risen so rapidly as his friend, but he was a capable bookkeeper, a fine salesman, and a steady, accurate worker, who earned a good salary.

“This thing has hit the old man hard, Dick,” Walton said.

“Anybody can see it by the way he walks with his head down like that,” Dick returned. “The house can stand it, of course, with all its out-of-town support, but Gate City trade was the old man’s pet, and I’ll be blamed if it doesn’t look like he’ll never get any more of it. It actually gives a store a black eye to have any of our brands on sale. Jim Wilson said just now that he’d take a keg of our soda if we’d scrape our name off of it. I gave him a piece of my mind, but he said we were looking to our interests and he was looking to his. I had no idea the people of this town could be such blasted fools!” and, considerably disgruntled, Dick went back to his post.

Several days passed. The situation was no better. Thorp had induced one of the railroads to build a sidetrack from the main line to a platform in the rear of his store, and Eastern goods were being unloaded in wholesale quantities right on the premises. He was also advertising for a vacant house in which to accommodate the overflow of his business. The only available one on the street belonged to Whipple, and that, of course, he couldn’t rent at any price.

Among those most concerned, though rather indirectly, was the Rev. Luke Matthews. He was seeing his rich patron in a new light, for, now that he was in trouble, old Whipple had less time to devote to the uplifting of humanity, either spiritually or materially, and he often denied himself to the minister’s frequent calls.

“Just wait till I get my head above water,” Whipple said once, when Matthews clutched his arm and essayed to speak of a matter concerning the church. “I reckon I’m worldly minded, Brother Matthews, but a man has to be tainted that way to fight worldly matters. Right now I am as full of Old Nick as I ever was in my worst days. I know it; I feel it; but, by gum! I am not ashamed. Day and night prayers wouldn’t move a rascally skunk like Thorp. He was my friend as long as he could suck my blood, and now he is my worst enemy because I wouldn’t let him.”

As the weeks passed, matters only grew worse for the wholesale store. Its town customers dropped off till local business amounted to nothing at all. One morning the merchant walked the full length of the main street. He went up one side to the court-house at the far end, and then slowly returned on the other side. On the way he met Matthews, who told him something he had not heard, and he walked on, now more slowly than ever. As he was passing through the counting-room on his way to his private office he paused between the stools on which Fred and Dick were seated. His face was ashen in color, his lower lip was quivering like that of a weeping child.

“What do you think is in the wind now, boys?” he gulped, as he placed an unsteady hand on Fred’s shoulder.

“I have no idea,” Fred answered.

“All the balance have combined,” Whipple groaned.

“Who?—what?—how combined?” Fred asked, wondering if his old friend was not actually losing his reason.

“Why, all the other retailers have formed a pool to beat Thorp, and in doing it they have knifed me. They have formed a combine to buy their stuff in St. Louis and New York in order to get car-load rates. They had a caucus last night in the rear end of Thompson & White’s shebang, and the last one signed up. They don’t buy a thing from us—the man who spends a nickel at this house loses his membership. They are a lot of sneaking curs, to pull me down and stamp on me just because that scamp’s upset business, but they done it. The thing will spread all over the State, and I’ll be laughed at as a doddering old idiot. Folks like nothing better than to see a successful man get it in the neck.

“As I passed along the street just now they slunk away from their doors, so I couldn’t see ‘em laugh. They call themselves ‘wholesale men’ now, and say they are going to oust me and Thorp both—make us count cross-ties out of town. I’ve had insults in my time, but being yoked with that skunk is a dose I can’t swallow. I’m beat, and beat bad. If there was a loophole to crawl out at—if I could take one single step to defend myself—I’d give away half I’ve accumulated to be able to do it. My money paid for two-thirds of the Belgian-block pavement around the park; I gave more than half that was subscribed to the girls’ school-building, and paid, entire, for the wall round the graveyard, to say nothing of what I put in the fire company, and new engines at the gas-works. I done those things, boys, for the town they live in, and yet they can drag my name in the mire and throw mud and slime on me.”

He turned suddenly and left them, striding on to his desk in the adjoining room.

“Poor old fellow!” Dick said. “Nothing on earth could have cut his pride more.”

“If he could only hit back in some substantial way,” Walton reflected, aloud. “Think of some plan, Dick.”

“Think of nothing!” the younger man said, gloomily. “Of all things on earth, I never could have dreamt of those fellows combining that way.”

A moment later a postman came in with a bundle of letters and handed them to Fred.

“Looks like they are getting you fellows in the nine hole at last,” he said, with a laugh. “Every grocer on the street is putting out a big sign. One of them has got a picture of the old man with a handkerchief to his eyes standing in a store without a single customer, while all the crowd is headed for another place.”

“Oh, we’ll have to wait and see,” Fred retorted, angrily. “I must give these letters to Mr. Whipple.”

As he went in the old man’s office, he found the grocer pacing up and down, his hat in his hand, his brow dark with passion. He waved the letters from him.

“Open ‘em yourself,” he said. “I’m going home. I feel like a candidate on election night who didn’t get a vote in his own precinct. I don’t intend to stay down here where everybody can pick at me. I heard what that whelp said to you and Dick. They are all gloating over me like buzzards over a dead ox. When you come up to supper, bring the night mail with you.”

He strode from the room, and Fred heard his despondent step on the resounding floor all the way to the rear door of the long house.

Fred worked over his books and out-of-town orders till near sunset; then he took down his coat and hat.

“It might work,” he mused. “At any rate, there can be no harm in asking him about it.” He went out, and, turning into a quiet side-street, he walked up to the comfortable home of his employer, which stood on a slight elevation among the best houses of the place.

It occupied a small lot, as did its neighbors, and there were no grass or flowers about it. It was built of yellow bricks, and had a porch in front, against which, on a lattice, some vines were growing.

As he entered the gate an elderly woman approached the front door and stood waiting for him. It was Stephen Whipple’s wife, a gaunt woman in a simple black dress without ornament, and wearing her iron-gray hair brushed smoothly over her brow.

“You are earlier than usual,” she said. “I hope you have good news. I don’t think he can stand it much longer. I have never seen him so much troubled in my life. His pride is cut to the quick. He has always thought he could cope with trickery in any form, and being helpless this way under the taunts of those men is fairly killing him. If he was thoroughly at himself he might hold his own, but he is getting old, and being mad this way really keeps him from using his best judgment.”

“No, nothing has turned up yet,” Fred told her; “but I thought I’d speak to him before supper.”

“Well, he’ll be glad to see you, anyway,” the woman said, plaintively. “He thinks a lot of you, Fred—in fact, we both do. He has often said he blesses the day you came to him. He is lying down on the lounge in your room. Some of the neighbors were in just now chattering about the thing, and he slipped up there to keep from hearing what was said.”

Fred found his employer stretched out at full length on a lounge in the big, light room which he had occupied for over two years.

“Oh,” Whipple said, “it’s you! Well, has anything turned up—I mean—but I know nothing has. Nothing can succeed against a gang of plotting, ungrateful dogs like they are. I’ve boosted ‘em up through every panic and hard spell that come, keeping some of ‘em afloat when they didn’t have a dollar in their pockets, and now they not only knife me, but they make a public joke of it.”

“Mr. Whipple, I’ve been trying to think of some way to—”

“Oh, you have? Well, spit it out!—spit it out!” And the merchant suddenly threw his feet around and sat up, clutching the edge of the lounge with his big hands, while he stared anxiously from dilating eyes that were all but bloodshot.

“Of course, I hesitate to—” Fred began modestly, but was interrupted by Whipple.

“Hesitate!—hesitate the devil! It is always that way with you, although you’ve got the safest, soundest judgment of any young man in the West. You hesitated to tell me you thought San Antonio would be a good place to put an agent, and it has proved the biggest opening we ever had. You hesitated before advising me against that Eastern salt company that had been sucking my blood for years before you came and smelt out their thievery. You hesitated to—but, darn it, quit hesitating! This is no time to hesitate; we are in a dirty fight, and twenty yellow dogs are on top of us gnawing the meat from our bones.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking over it all, Mr. Whipple—” Fred was slightly flushed—“and there is only one way I can see to make any move at all; but that really does seem to me to offer some chance of—”

“Move? What is it? For God’s sake, what is it?”

“Why, you know you own the large retail store building which was vacated when Stimpson Brothers gave up, and you have not found a suitable tenant, there being no one but Thorp who wants it. It is in the very heart of the retail section, and the best-furnished building in town, with the best show-windows, and—”

“Yes, yes; but what of that?” Whipple burst out, impatiently. “I don’t care a snap for the rent of a mere house when I am being literally choked to death by a mob of devils.”

“It wasn’t that,” Walton said; “but there are hundreds of your personal friends in town who would gladly buy their home supplies from you if you would only accommodate them. There are many first-class wholesale houses which conduct retail stores in the towns they are in, and, you know, none of them ever had a better reason for doing it than you now have. It wouldn’t hurt your trade out of town a bit, for your customers are not concerned in this fight; and a big, first-class, up-to-date retail store in the centre of town, supplied from our stock, would—”

Whipple sprang up. His eyes were dancing with delight. He leaned over Walton and put his hands on his shoulders.

“Great God, why didn’t I think of that?” he chuckled. “My boy, you are a dandy!—you are a wheel-horse! It will work like a charm. The thing advertises itself. We’ll make ‘em quake in their socks. They will laugh on the other sides of their faces now. And the beauty of it is, we can flaunt the thing on the public ten days before they can receive their first shipment; we’ll bill the town in the morning, and cover the front of the new store with black letters. Whoopee! whoopee!” And in his heavy boots old Whipple actually executed a clumsy clog-dance. “And we’ll let Dick manage it,” he went on, as he paused panting. “That sort of promotion would be a feather in his cap. As for you, you’ve got to pilot the big ship, my boy. A head like yours needs big things to deal with. Lord, I see Thorp’s face now, and, as for that other gang of cutthroats, they will actually die of dry rot!”

Whipple gave another whoop, and shuffled his feet thunderously.

“What is the matter up there?” It was Mrs. Whipple’s astonished voice from below.

“Matter nothing!” her husband replied, as he leaned over the balustrade in the corridor and looked down. “Put the best supper you can rake up on the table. Kill the fatted calf, and don the royal purple! Me and this boy is going to celebrate. He has saved the ship! Get out a bottle of that grape wine, and let joy be unconfined. We’re in the fight to stay now, and we’re going to have a feast—a regular war-feast!”