"There isn't enough in it," he assured her. "I'd rather promote a traction line. This is the best ever. Why, Fanny, the entire population, on both sides of the road for a solid hundred miles, is laying awake nights and turning handsprings by day, all just to make money for yours truly."

"They owe it to you," she insisted. "Look how much money you're making for them. The only thing I don't like about it is that you're away so much. You must manage, though, to be home the twenty-first. I'm going to give a lawn reception."

"Fine!" he exclaimed. "Every little bit helps. It's a good business move," and he walked away, laughing.

CHAPTER XXI
IN WHICH THE SHEEP ARE SHEARED AND SKINNED AND THEIR HIDES TANNED

An engineer appeared upon the scene and ran a line straight down the center of Main Street, amid intense excitement on the part of the populace; then he trailed off into the country, and farmers driving into town reported seeing him at work all along the line. It was strange the amount of business that farmers found in town of late. Never before had so brisk a country trade been enjoyed at this season of the year, and the results were far-reaching. The Honorable G. W. Battles, on the occasion of one of Wallingford's visits to the bank, invited him into the back room.

"Are you going to build that hotel, Colonel?" he asked as soon as they were seated.

"I scarcely think so," replied Wallingford with apparent reluctance. "The traction line itself is going to take all my time to look after it, and I really do not see how I can take part in any other work of magnitude."

"That lot, then," began Mr. Battles hesitatingly. "You know that property belongs to me. Judge Lampton, on the very day you first stopped here, came for a power of attorney to dispose of it. Of course your option hasn't expired yet, but if you don't figure on using the ground I might consider the building of a hotel myself."

"Good investment," declared Wallingford. "Just pay me the difference in increased valuation and take over the site."

"The difference in valuation?" mused Mr. Battles. "Of course, I appreciate the fact that you are entitled to some of the wealth you produce for us. About how much do you think the property has increased?"

"Oh, about four times," estimated Wallingford. "The lot's probably worth two thousand by now."

He had looked for a vigorous objection to this, but when the other turned to a scratch pad and began figuring, he was sorry that he had not asked more, for presently Mr. Battles turned to him with:

"Well, in the way property has been going, I presume the lot is worth about two thousand. You paid a twenty-five-dollar option to hold it for ninety days, and that, of course, you lose. You owe me five hundred for the property and I owe you two thousand."

With no further words he took from his desk his private check book and wrote Mr. Wallingford an order for fifteen hundred dollars. Then, as by a common impulse, they walked straight up to the office of the Battlesburg Blade. That evening's issue flamed anew. The big hotel was a certainty. It would be called the Battles House. It would be four or five stories in height, and ground would be broken for it as soon as the plans could be prepared. In the same item were published the details of the real estate transaction. Mr. Battles had paid two thousand dollars for his own property, which, less than two months before, he had agreed to sell at five hundred dollars! Battlesburg was waking up.

Mr. Geldenstein and Henry Quig came to Mr. Wallingford with another proposition. Did he intend to build the new opera house, or would he care to dispose of the property he had secured with that end in view? As a favor to them he would dispose of it. With the money he had received from Mr. Battles he had already taken up his option on this and other property, and he let the opera-house syndicate have it for three thousand, four times what it had cost him. In the papers of Paris, London, Dublin, Berlin, Rome, these things were retold, and the temperature of those places went up another degree or two. Keeping his fingers carefully upon the pulse of the town, Wallingford began to draw upon his capital and close in his options. Men whose property he had been holding in leash, accepted that money with wailing and gnashing of teeth, but, within a week, whatever of selfish bitterness they might have held was forgotten in the fever of speculation; for by the end of that time there appeared on the hill just east of town a gang of men with horses and scrapers – and they began chipping off the top of that hill! Wallingford was out there every morning in his buckboard and yellow leggings and yellow leather cap. The Battlesburg Blade and all the other papers from Lewisville to Elliston blazed with the fact that actual construction work had begun upon the L., B. & E., and the time when trolleys would begin to whiz through the main streets of a dozen villages was calculated to a second. Supply men, the agents of street car shops, of ironworks, of electrical machinery and the like, began flocking to Battlesburg until even Pete Parsons woke up and raised his hotel rates; and the arrival of each one of them was heralded in Colonel Wallingford's invaluable adjunct, the Evening Blade. From these men Wallingford secured "cuts," which he distributed gratis, and pictures of the palatial L., B. & E. cars appeared in all the papers along its right of way; photographs of the special wheat cars, of the freight and express cars, even of the through sleeping cars which would traverse the L., B. & E., carrying passengers from the western limit of the Midland Valley traction system to the most eastern point of the Golden West traction system.

Ground for the opera house and the hotel was broken within a month, and, immediately upon this, small gangs of men were set to work grading near half a dozen different towns at once upon the projected route. The supreme moment of Wallingford's planning had arrived, for now leaped into devouring flame the blaze that he had kindled. What had at first been a quickening of business became a craze. At a rapidly accelerating pace property began to change hands, with a leap in value at every change. Men thought by day and dreamt by night of nothing but real estate speculation. A hundred per cent. could be made in a day by a lucky trade. A mere "suburban" lot that was purchased in the morning for two hundred and fifty dollars, by night could be sold for five hundred, and every additional transaction added fuel to the flames. The papers chronicled these deals as examples of the wonderful wealth that had suddenly descended upon their respective towns. Money, long hoarded, leaped forth from its hiding places. Everybody had money, everybody was making money. Even the farmers made real estate purchases in the towns, not to hold, but to turn over. The craze for speculation had at last seized upon them all, and it was now that Wallingford began to reap his harvest. A sale here, a sale there, with an occasional purchase to offset them, and he gradually began to unload, making it a rule never to close a deal that did not net him ten times the amount that he had invested. He was on the road constantly now, first in one village and then in another, ostensibly to look after details of the building of his route, but in reality to snap up money that was certain to be offered him for this or that or the other piece of property that he held.

And all this time the people to whom he sold were raving of the wealth that he had made for them! Battlesburg nor any other town stopped for a moment to consider that he had brought it not one cent of new wealth; that the money they were passing so feverishly from hand to hand was their own; that the values he had created for them were purely artificial. They would only realize this after he had gone, and then would come gradually the knowledge that, in place of creating wealth, he had lost it to them in the exact amount that he carried away. Never in all his planning had it crossed his mind really to build a traction line. Throughout a stretch of a hundred miles he had succeeded in starting a mad, unreasoning scramble for real estate, and he, having bought first to sell last, was the principal gainer. He was unloading now at flood-tide from one end of the line to the other, and the ebb would see all these thousands of people standing dazed and agape upon the barren beach of their hopes. Some few shrewd ones would be ahead, but for the most part the "investors" would find themselves with property upon their hands bought at an absurd valuation that could never be realized.

At no time did Wallingford talk to his wife about his plans and intentions. She, like the rest of them, saw the work apparently pushing forward, and gave herself up to the social triumphs that were hers at last. She was supremely happy, and her lawn reception upon the twenty-first was, to quote the Battlesburg Blade, "the most exclusive and recherché al fresco function of a decade," and Wallingford, hurrying in late from the road, scarcely recognized his wife as, in a shimmering white gown, she moved among her guests with a flush upon her cheeks that heightened the sparkling of her eyes. The grounds had been wired, and electric lights of many colors glowed among the trees. On the porch an orchestra, recruited from the ranks of the Battlesburg band, discoursed ambitious music, and Wallingford smiled grimly as he thought of the awakening that must come within a week or so. He had reached the house unobserved, and paused for a moment outside the fence to view the scene as a stranger might.

"I made it myself," he mused, with a strange perversion of pride. "I'm the Big Josh, all right; but it will be a shame to kick the props out from under all this giddy jubilee."

His wife discovered him and came smiling to meet him, and on his way into the house to change his clothing Tim Battles met him at the porch steps with a cordial handshake.

"Well, how goes it, Colonel?" asked the mayor. "We're listening now for the hum of the trolleys almost any day."

"Maybe you're deaf," retorted Wallingford enigmatically, and laughed. "What will you do if the golden spike is never pounded in?"

"Drop dead," replied the other promptly. "Every cent I could lay my hands on is invested in property for which I'm refusing all sorts of fancy prices, and I'm not going to sell any of it until your first car whizzes through Main Street. Lucky you got back to-night. You'd regret it if you didn't hear my speech at the fountain dedication to-morrow."

"Is it up?" inquired Wallingford perfunctorily.

"Up and ready to spout; and so is father."

He said this because his father was approaching them, and all three of them laughed courteously at the sally. When Wallingford, cleansed and dressed, came downstairs again, he was more jovially cordial than usual, even for him, and made his guests, as he always did, feel how incomplete the evening would have been without his presence; but after they had all gone he withdrew into the library, where, after she had seen to the setting of her house to rights, his wife joined him. He had taken a bottle of wine in with him, but it stood upon the table unopened, while he sat close by it, holding an unlighted cigar and gazing thoughtfully out of the window. She hesitated in the doorway and he looked up slowly.

"Come in, Fanny," he invited her soberly. "Sit down!" and opening the wine he poured out a glass for her.

She sipped at it and set it back upon the table.

"What's the matter, Jim?" she asked solicitously. "Don't you feel well? Aren't things going right?"

"Never felt better in my life," he declared, "and things never panned out half so good. I guess I'm tired. I never pulled off anything near so big a game, but my end of the boom is over. To-day I sold the last piece of property I own, except this. Of course, I've been too wise to sell any of the ground that was given to me for shops and depots and terminal stations. I'd lay myself open to the law if I did that; and the law and I are real chummy. I'm particular about the law. But I am rid of everything else, and, in the five months we have been here, I have cleaned up over two hundred thousand dollars."

"The most money we ever did have!" she exclaimed. "Is that in addition to what we had when we came here?"

"All velvet," he assured her. "We have considerably over three hundred thousand now, all told; a full third of a million!"

"I knew you could do it if you only set yourself to it," she declared. "And all of that fortune, for it is a fortune, Jim, was made in a clean, honorable way."

He looked up at her, puzzled. Could it be possible that she did not understand?

"Is a dollar honest?" he responded dryly, and he talked no more of business that night.

The next morning ushered in a great day for Battlesburg. Early in the dawn two carpenters appeared in Courthouse Square and began putting up a platform; but, early as they were, boys were already on the ground, trying to peer beneath the mysterious swathings of the "veiled" fountain. Dan Hopkins set up his ice cream and candy stand, and hoarse Jim Moller appeared with his red and blue and green toy balloons. About nine o'clock the farm wagons came lumbering into town with the old folks. About ten, smart "rigs" drawn by real "high steppers" came speeding in ahead of whirling clouds of dust, and these rigs carried the young folks. By noon there were horses tied to every hitching-post, and genuine throngs shuffled aimlessly up one side of Main Street and down the other. There was the sound of shrieking whistles and of hoarse tin horns; there was the usual fight in front of Len Bradley's blacksmith shop. At one o'clock strange noises were wafted out upon the street from Odd Fellows' Hall. The Battlesburg brass band was practicing. At one-thirty Courthouse Square was jammed from fence to fence, and the street was black with people, the narrow lane between being constantly broken by perspiring mothers darting frantically after Willie and Susie and Baby Johnnie.

Za-a-a-am! At last here came the band, two and two, down the street, to the inspiriting strains of "Marching Through Georgia," with Will Derks at the head in a shako two feet high and performing the most marvelous gyrations with a shining brass baton. Throw it whirling right over a telephone wire, for instance, and never miss a stroke! Right through the crowd went the band, and in about ten minutes it came back to the lively step of "The Girl I Left Behind Me." Following the music came carriages, trailed off by Ben Kirby's gayly decorated grocery wagon; and in the first carriage of all were the Honorable G. W. Battles, the Honorable Timothy Battles, Judge Lampton, and last, but not least, that master of golden plenty, Colonel J. Rufus Wallingford! Ah, there rode the progress and prosperity, the greatness and power, the initiative and referendum not only of Battlesburg, but of a dozen once poor, now rich, villages between Lewisville and Elliston! Amid mingled music and huzzas the noble assemblage took their places upon the platform, the gentlemen in the front row, the ladies in the rear; and, at one side, was a table and a chair for that thoroughly alive representative of the press, Clint Richards.

The band stopped abruptly. The Honorable G. W. Battles had held up his hand for silence. He had the honor to introduce the speaker of the day, Mayor Timothy Battles, but before doing so he would take up a trifle of their time, only a few brief moments, to congratulate his beloved fellow citizens upon the brave and patriotic struggle they had made to bring Battlesburg to such a thriving condition that it could attract Eastern capital; and in vivid, glowing, burning words he depicted the glorious future that awaited Battlesburg when she should become the new Queen of the Prairies, the new Metropolis of the Middle West, the new Arbiter of Commerce and Wealth! Nobody escaped the Honorable G. W. Battles. From the farmer's hired hand who tilled the soil to the millionaire whose enterprise had made so much possible to them, he gave to every man his just and due meed of praise, and there was not one within hearing of his voice who did not ache at that very moment to vote for the Honorable G. W. Battles, for something, for anything! For full forty-five minutes he introduced the speaker of the day, sitting down at last amid deafening cheers that were so aptly described in that evening's issue of the Battlesburg Blade as "salvos of applause."

The Honorable Timothy Battles, mayor of Battlesburg, had also but very little to say. He also would not take up much of their time. It was merely his privilege to introduce a gentleman whom they all knew well, one who had come among them modestly and unobtrusively, asking nothing for himself, but bringing to them precious Opportunity, of the golden fruits of which they had already been given more than a taste; a gentleman of masterful ability, of infinite resources, of magnificent plans, of vast accomplishment; in short, a gentleman who had made famous, across five counties and to thousands of grateful people, his own name as a synonym for all that was progressive, for all that was vigorous, for all that was ennobling – the name of Colonel J. Rufus Wallingford!

"Wallingford!" That was the magic word for which they had waited. Through all of the Honorable G. W. Battles' speech of introduction the name itself had not been used, although the address had bristled with allusions to the gentleman who bore it. In the same manner the Honorable Timothy Battles, trained in the same effective school of oratory, had held back the actual name until this dramatic moment, when, with hand upraised, he shouted it down upon them and waited, smiling, for that tumultuous shout of enthusiasm which he knew to be inevitable.

"WALLINGFORD!" Courthouse Square fairly rang with the syllables. Patiently the Honorable Timothy Battles awaited the subsidence of the storm he had so painstakingly created, smiling upon his beloved people with ineffable approval. Not yet was the Honorable Timothy Battles through, however. He had a few words to say about the political party which he had the honor to represent in his humble capacity, and how it had laid the ground work of the prosperity upon which their friend and benefactor, Mr. J. Rufus Wallingford, had reared such a magnificent super-structure; and amid the deadly silence of enforced respect he made them a rousing political speech for a solid half hour, after which he really did introduce that splendid benefactor, Colonel J. Rufus Wallingford!

The Colonel, all that a distinguished capitalist should be in externals, arose hugely in his frock coat of black broadcloth and looked at his watch. He was not an orator, he said; he was a mere business man, and as he had listened to the earnest remarks of his very dear friends, the Honorable G. W. Battles and the Honorable Timothy Battles, he felt very humble indeed. He had done but little that he should deserve all the glowing encomiums that had been pronounced upon him. The energetic citizens who stood before him were themselves responsible for the new era of prosperity, and what trifle he had been able to add to it they were quite welcome to have. He only wished that it were more and of greater value. He would remember them, and how they had all worked hand in hand together, throughout life, and in the meantime he thanked them, and he thanked them again for their cordial treatment ever since that first and most happy moment that he had come among them. Thanking them yet once more, he mopped his brow and sat down.

Again the Honorable G. W. Battles was upon his feet. He had now, beloved citizens, to call their attention to the beautiful and generous gift that had been made them by their esteemed fellow townsman, Colonel J. Rufus Wallingford (great applause) and the honor, moreover, to introduce to them the charming wife of that esteemed fellow townsman, to whose fair hand should be committed the cord that was to reveal to Battlesburg its first official glimpse of this splendid gift. The cord was placed in her hand; the Battlesburg Band, at a signal from the Honorable G. W. Battles, struck into "The Star-Spangled Banner;" the wife of their esteemed fellow townsman, confused, yet secretly elated, gave a tug at the silken cord; the gray shroud that had enveloped the new bronze fountain fell apart; Jim Higgins, waiting at the basement window of the courthouse for his signal, turned on the cock and the water spouted high in air, a silver stream in the glorious sunlight of midday, falling back to the basin in a million glittering diamonds. At that moment, gathering these descriptive facts into words as he went, Clint Richards grabbed his notes from the table, and, springing over the railing of the platform, forced his way through the cheering, howling crowd to strike out on a lope for the office of the Battlesburg Blade.

Well, it was all over. The grand shakedown was accomplished; he had milked his milk; he had sheared his sheep and skinned them, and nailed their hides up to dry. To-morrow, or in two or three days at most, he would quietly disappear and leave all these Reubens to wake up and find themselves waiting at the morgue. But it had been a skyrocket finish, anyhow, and he reflected upon this with a curious satisfaction as he made his slow progress to the street, stopping at every step to shake hands with those who crowded up to greet him as the incomparable human cornucopia. It was with a sigh of relief, however, that he finally reached home, where he could shut himself away from all this adulation.

"Honest, Fanny," he confessed with an uneasy laugh, "it's coming too strong for me. I want to get away from it."

"'Away'!" she echoed. "I thought you liked all this. I do. I like the place and the people – and we amount to something here."

"That's right, puff up," he bantered her. "I like that tight-vest feeling, too, but I can't keep it going, for the yeast's run out; so it's us for Europe. Next spring I'll try this game again. A couple more such deals, and then I'll jump on Wall Street and slam the breath out of it. I have an idea or two about that game – "

He stopped abruptly, checked by the dawning horror in his wife's face, then he laughed a bit nervously.

"Go away from here: from the only place where we've ever had respect for ourselves and from others?" she faltered. "Not build the traction line? Make all this happiness I've had a theft that is worse than stealing money? Jim! You can't mean it!"

"You don't understand business," he protested. "This is all perfectly legal, and the traction line wouldn't make me as much in ten years as I've already cleared. I'd be a rank sucker – Hello, who's this?"

They were standing before the window of the library, and at that moment a road-spattered automobile, one of the class built distinctively for service, stopped in front of the door. Out of it sprang a rather undersized man with a steel-gray beard and very keen gray eyes, but not at all impressive looking. His clothing was very dusty, but he did not even shake his ulster as he strode up to the porch and rang the bell. Of all their household not even Billy Ricks had as yet returned, and Wallingford himself opened the door.

"Is this the residence of Colonel Wallingford?" asked the man crisply.

"I am Mr. Wallingford."

"I am E. B. Lott, of the Midland Valley Traction System, which was yesterday consolidated with the Golden West group. I dropped in to talk with you about your Lewisville-Elliston line."

Mrs. Wallingford stopped for only a moment to gather the full significance of what this might mean, and then hurried upstairs. She was afraid to remain for fear she might betray her own eagerness.

"Step in," said Wallingford calmly, and led the way to the library.