# Quinby and Son/Chapter 8

THE realization came to Bert, with over whelming poignancy, that this was not the home-coming he had visioned. His imagination had pictured a long day of busy trade, a jubilant counting of receipts, and a triumphant departure from the scene of victory.
In contrast his present bearing was leaden and dull. After Mr. Clud had left him, he went slowly along the avenue. He was too discouraged to think. He dared not think. For, stifle it though he tried, an inner voice kept whispering that perhaps, after all, he had made a mistake, that Tom Woods and his father had been right.
And so he came to that part of the thoroughfare occupied by his father's store. Mr. Quinby, his back turned to the street, was just locking the door. Bert could have slipped past. He half made the motion, only to stop. And then his father faced around, and saw him, and paused before slipping the key into his pocket.
"Hello," he said half-doubtfully. Then, because the moment plainly demanded something more than this: "Been waiting?"
"No, sir; I just came along."
​"Oh!" They walked on together, father and son by the blood tie, but as far apart as the poles in their understanding of each other.
This meeting, too, was far from the pattern of Bert's dreams. As he had seen it in imagination, his was to be the part of one who had conquered and had proven his case, and his father's that of one who was forced to give honest credit and admiration. He sighed.
"Tired?" Mr. Quinby asked without warmth.
"Yes, sir."
"A night's sleep will fix you up. How was business?"
"Good." The boy would have bitten off his tongue before he would have confessed otherwise.
His father glanced at him sharply, but the darkness hid whatever of the bitter truth his face would have shown. They came to the house, and were almost at the door, before Mr. Quinby spoke again.
"Who's holding the money?"
"Why, it's in the bank."
"I know that; the bank teller told me—I mean who's holding the book?"
"I am. We can't draw money unless we both sign."
"That was Sam's idea."
"Yes, sir."
"Careful Sam," said the man, and passed inside. As Bert undressed he thought that he had ​never before heard his father speak of his former clerk in just that tone.
The morning brought him a return of courage. After all, fortune was too much to expect at one stroke. He attended church, went for a long walk, and came back to dinner in a more cheerful frame of mind. There were signs that he had learned to read, and one of these was his father's face. Just now his father's mouth told him that something was again amiss. After dinner Mr. Quinby followed him out of the dining room.
"Bert, what's this? I found it in the hall upstairs."
It was Old Man Clud's card.
"He gave it to me last night," the boy said.
"Why did he give it to you?"
"I don't know; he forced it into my hand."
"Have you done any business with this man?"
"No, sir."
Mr. Quinby, with an angry twist of his hands, tore the card into pieces. "The vultures gather before the feast," he exclaimed.
Bert, from his reading, knew something of the habits of vultures. His cheeks flushed. "You're not very encouraging," he said.
This time it was the man who flushed. "I shouldn't have said that, Bert. But keep away from Clud. Mind that. Take a word of advice for once in your life. Keep away from Clud."
Next day, when Bert reached the store, Sam ​was there ahead of him, a new scheme bubbling in his fertile brain.
"Every great business success in America," he said wisely, "has been built out of the ashes of a failure or a near-failure. In most cases the original plan was good . . . all it needed was one more touch to put it across. The eye that sees to-morrow is always a jump ahead of the eye that sees only to-day. What did you do yesterday?"
"I took a walk."
"I sat home and tried to find ways to improve the business. We can't wait for people to come in here and look over our newspaper files. We've got to bring the papers to them."
"Deliver papers to everybody?" Bert cried, aghast. "That would cost more than fifty cents a week for each subscriber."
"No; no. I'm going to go out to-day and to-morrow and call on everybody we've signed up. I'm going to ask every woman if there's anything she's particularly interested in buying. Suppose some one wants a dining room table. I make a note of that. I get here early in the morning and go through the papers. If there are any dining room table bargains I telephone her and tell her what is offered, the store and the price. What's going to happen after we do that once or twice?"
Bert shook his head.
"Oh, use your imagination," Sam said impatiently. "She's going to be so tickled she'll tell all ​her friends, and they'll send in their half-dollars a month for a Service membership. It isn't all a question of what you sell. It's how you sell it."
It needed no argument to convince Bert that the plan was good. The complexion of his fortunes changed, and he dusted the tables and polished the counter with a light heart. That day he was all alone in the store and, though trade was distressingly dull, his courage never once fell from its high notch.
Noon was on him before he knew it. He did not want to close the store lest some customer, arriving and finding the door locked, would depart dissatisfied and irritated. He telephoned his mother that he would not be home for dinner, opened a can of sardines, and ate once more with the gas stove as his table. At two o'clock Bill Harrison stumped in and presented him with a painting of a Purple Emperor on the wing.
"I thought you'd like to have it hang in your bedroom," Bill said shyly.
Bert was astounded at the progress his friend had made. The picture was unmistakably boyish, but the drawing was boldly executed and the coloring did not suggest indecision or uncertainty. The thing had life.
"I'm going to frame it," Bert said impulsively. "And some day, when you're famous, it will be the best picture in the house."
Bill grinned. "Rave on," he said. "You're ​looking years ahead, but I like to hear you say it. Tom Woods came to my house after he left here Saturday. He asked me to give you a message. He wants you to write him and let him know how things are going."
Bert wrote that afternoon.
We didn't have much of an opening day. I guess I expected too much. Sam says it takes time to build up a business. I don't mean that Saturday was a total failure. We took in over ten dollars, but I had been hoping for about fifty dollars. Sam's a wonderful fellow for ideas. He bobbed up with a new one this morning, and is out now seeing our customers to find out if there's anything they want to buy at once. We'll telephone them every day and let them know what's advertised. That ought to help the business a lot. They'll know we're trying to please them and give them good service.
At five o'clock Sam came back to the store, jubilant.
"It went over big," he reported. "I signed up five new ones. I landed an old friend of yours."
"Who?"
"Mrs. Busher."
Bert made a grimace.
"She put you on the fire," Sam continued, "and roasted you to a turn. She said you were an impertinent young whipper-snapper. I had a job smoothing her out and getting her subscription. She's got one of those high-and-mighty ways of talking that would get under anybody's skin; but when you're in business you've got to smile and give soft answers. You can't insult a person to-​day and have him give you his trade to-morrow."
"I'd like to tell her a few things," Bert said hotly.
"Here, now," Sam cried in alarm; "none of that. If she ever calls up and you answer the telephone, be as sweet as honey. She's one of our subscribers and her half-dollar is as good as anybody else's."
"I guess I've got sense enough to try to hold our trade," Bert said stiffly. For the first time, he thought, he had seen an assumption of superiority on Sam's part, and he did not like it. He was willing to admit, to himself, that Sam was the strength of the partnership, but he objected to Sam rubbing that truth in.
Saturday night, when they balanced the books for the second time, the complete receipts for the week ran fifty-two dollars, and their expenses had been forty dollars. Bert gave a gurgle of delight.
"Twelve dollars profit. Not so bad, Sam. We're off now, aren't we?"
Sam looked at him queerly. "Profit? There's no profit. Where are you leaving our drawing accounts? Your father takes so much out of his business every week to live on, doesn't he?"
"Why . . . I suppose so."
"Do you think I can live on air? I've got to have a drawing account. I've got to pay board, and laundry bills, and restaurant checks, and my clothes won't last forever. Where's the money ​coming from if it doesn't come out of the work I do? Even if your father's business wasn't profitable he'd have to draw out money every week to support his family."
The logic of the situation was all with Sam. "How much are you going to draw?" Bert asked weakly.
"Ten dollars a week. That means you draw five dollars every Saturday. Two-thirds of the weekly account for me; one-third for you."
Bert paid Sam his money and took his own share. The amount to be deposited on Monday had shrunk to thirty-seven dollars.
"We . . . we lost money on the week's business," he said.
"We'll be showing a profit within two more weeks," Sam said confidently.
But, as the weeks passed, each Monday morning saw less money deposited than had been spent the week before. Slowly, but inexorably, the account of The Shoppers' Service at the bank grew slimmer and slimmer.
In September the high school reopened, and Bert went back for his second year. The call went out for football candidates, but he did not respond—he had no time for athletics. Sam was coming to the store very early each morning, going through the newspapers and telephoning prices to customers so that they might take an early train to the city. In the afternoon, as soon as classes ​were over, Bert hurried over to Washington Avenue and relieved him. And then Sam went home, sometimes to catch up with needed sleep, sometimes to rack his brain for new ways in which to make the business prosper.
He was working with a fervor and a concentration worthy of a better cause. Eleven hours a day in the store was no uncommon occurrence, nor was it unusual for him to telephone to thirty subscribers during the course of the morning. Twice he went to the city and tried to induce the big department stores to send him copies of their advertisements before publication so that he would have advance information to give his clients. That the plan failed left him no whit discouraged. The book that had been his business Gospel had pounded into him the philosophy that most men struggle desperately to achieve their business salvation. He was steeled to go on in daily expectation of the turning of the tide. Was he not industrious? Was he not gracious in his dealings with customers? Was he not always awake to catch at opportunity? Did not the book pledge him that these things would bring their reward?
In one way, spending his afternoons and part of each evening at the store shaped Bert's hours to a useful end. The ice cream, coffee and sandwich trade was never brisk and he had never been one to take kindly to dawdling about with his hands in his pockets. And so, to speed the dragging min​utes, he burrowed into his school books and achieved a standing above that which he had ever known before. He had a shrewd suspicion that his father was waiting for a sight of his first monthly report; and it was not without an inward glow of satisfaction that he brought it home. He had scored over ninety in every subject.
"Good work," Mr. Quinby said briefly, and signed the card and gave it back to him.
The boy frowned. It seemed to him that his father had been expecting a bad record and was all set to lay it against the time given to the Washington Avenue partnership. He said as much to his mother.'
"Bert," his mother sighed, "sometimes I think you've got a few broken corners in your brain. You can see so many things from the wrong angle."
"If I had brought home a rotten report I'd have heard more than two words."
"Many more," his mother admitted cheerfully. "What do you do to your bicycle when it is running perfectly?"
"Nothing; I let it alone."
"Certainly; you tinker with it only when it gets out of order."
He felt that he had been worsted in this fling at logic. However, it was not in his stubborn nature to surrender gracefully.
"It looks funny, anyway," he said, and went ​back to Sam and the store . . . and to his books.
But the time came when he sat before an open page and took no meaning from what was printed there. Tragedy brooded in his eyes. The bank balance had almost reached the vanishing point. Day by day he and Sam had gone deeper into a hole that seemed to have no bottom. As though to mock him, the business had always been on the point of gaining enough to be self-supporting, and had always been failing of the mark. A few more weeks, he knew, and there would be nothing left in the bank, nothing left in the cash drawer. And then. . . .
The picture froze him. The store closed, its little stock of furniture sold, the end of a dream. To be pointed out through the town as one who had had his chance and who could not seize its promise. To have Dolf Muller cry the dashing of his hopes through the corridors of the high school. To have his father tell him that he had done a foolish thing and, like all fools, had lost his money.
To a boy, whose world is just a succession of to-days, a disaster of the moment seems to bear the imprint of a calamity that will never lift. After the things that had happened to have to confess to his father that he had failed. . . . His face settled into a scowl, his jaw set, and suddenly he slammed shut the book and sat there with his fist upon it. He wouldn't give up.
​Events had made their mark even upon Sam. All at once he had become a bit silent, a bit preoccupied. To-night, after coming back to the store, he stood down near the window looking out at the people passing in the street. After a time he turned and came back slowly to where Bert leaned against the counter.
"Bert," he said frankly, "we're in a bad way. I don't believe in yelling quits before you're licked, but there's such a thing as not trying to fool yourself. We're pretty nearly at our finish."
Bert's heart thumped. "You mean you want to quit?"
"No. I don't mean that. This wouldn't be the time to quit. In two weeks we have Thanksgiving. A month after that we have Christmas, the biggest shopping season of the year. Why, everybody will be searching for bargains then. It's our time to clean up, to establish ourselves, to put the business on a paying basis. You know what the Christmas rush means all during December. Christmas shopping, Christmas crowds. We've got to get through the Christmas season into clear water."
Bert took the bank book from his pocket and opened it.
"I know." Sam pushed it away with an impatient movement of his hand. "There isn't enough there to carry us three more weeks."
"Then what's the idea of talking about lasting ​until Christmas? You have some kind of plan, haven't you?"
"Yes."
"What is it?"
"We might. . . ." Sam looked down at the floor and suddenly lifted his head. "We might borrow."
Slowly Bert closed the bank book and slipped it back into the pocket of his coat. A shiver had trembled through him . . . and had given place to a burning recklessness. Christmas! The crowd . . . everybody spending. If Christmas boomed their business they would be safe. No need to confess failure to anybody. The hope of that swept every other consideration from his mind.
"Every business borrows," Sam was saying. "Your father has notes over at the bank. I helped to keep his books. I know what I'm talking about."
"Could . . . could we get money at the bank?" Bert asked.
"No. You've got to show a bank you're making money; you've got to be what they call 'a safe risk.' I know that, too. I drew up a couple of statements for your father when he went over to borrow. We couldn't possibly show them any profits."
"Where could we get it?"
"Well. . . ." Sam looked down at the floor ​again. "I've seen you talking to Old Man Clud. He seems to have taken a shine to you."
Back to Bert's vision flashed the night when the money lender had pressed a card into his hand. And his father had said: "Keep away from Clud." But his father had borrowed money, too; Sam was authority for that. If it was all right for his father to risk a loan, why wasn't it all right for him? And the Christmas trade would sweep away the last of their difficulties and bring them into the sunshine of prosperity.
"If we can only get to Christmas we're safe," Sam murmured.
"I'll see Mr. Clud to-night," Bert said with decision.
There was no reason why he should have tried to hide himself in the stream of people eddying through Washington Avenue. Yet he watched the tide of faces apprehensively lest he meet a familiar countenance. Coming opposite the place where Mr. Clud had his office, he paused at the curb. Above the street, the yellow shade of one window was luminous with light save where a dark patch reflected the outline of a fat, squat figure.
With a studied air of indifference, after the fashion of one who wanders with aimless feet, he crossed the roadway. The door that gave in upon the stairway leading up to Mr. Clud's office was ajar. The boy halted and kicked at an imaginary ​object on the sidewalk. Side-eyed, he glanced up and down the thoroughfare. No one was in sight who might recognize him. With a quick movement he thrust open the door, closed it, and stood within the hall. For a while he remained there motionless as though half-expecting some one to follow him in. But the minutes passed, and no inquisitive person came to inquire into his motives, and his fast-beating heart grew quiet.
His footsteps echoed hollowly as he mounted the stairs. On the first landing he paused. A gas jet cast a pallid illumination; and as the feeble flame flickered the hallway swelled and shrank with moving shadows. Had it been necessary for him to search, he might have found it hard to read the tenants' names. But only one transom showed a light. He walked toward it and knocked.
"Come in, Mr. Quinby," wheezed Mr. Clud's voice.
The invitation gave him a start. Could Old Man Clud see through solid wood? Then common sense came to his rescue. The man must have observed him crossing the street and must have seen him enter the building. The feeling that he had been watched sent a cold thrill along his spine. He turned the knob and pushed open the door.
The room that he entered was almost as bare as a prison cell. Not so much as a mat upon the floor; not a picture upon the faded walls. Up near the window Old Man Clud sat before a small, ​unpainted table that held two pens, a bottle of ink and a ledger. One other chair stood close beside his own. An old safe stood in a corner. It was a dismal place; and at any other moment, Bert might have thought that he had come upon a dismal errand.
"It is a pleasure to see you," the man said, and caught his breath between the words. Abroad in the daytime his face, his bald dome of head, his folds of fat, seemed gray and unhealthy; here, in the night, they were ghastly with pallor. "How often have I said to myself, 'There goes one I should like to know better.' I had begun to fear you would never pay me a social visit."
"This is a business visit," said Bert.
"Is it, indeed? I'm glad to have you come in regardless of the reason. And how, might I ask, is your business venture progressing?"
"It . . . it's almost all right, but not quite."
Old Man Clud spread apart his pudgy hands with a gesture of sympathy. "How often have I observed that sometimes the most industrious have the hardest time? But courage, my friend. I have heard something of your business. It only needs a firm hand to hold on until the tide turns."
"That's the reason I came to see you," Bert broke in eagerly. "We want to borrow some money."
The money lender beamed. "You have come to the right place. You may recall that I once ​gave you one of my cards. Why did I do it? Because, my young friend, it gives me pleasure to help the deserving, to succor them in their time of need, to be able to say to myself, when their time of trial is over. There is a business I helped to success.' It is a wonderful privilege to be able to aid young men on their way to their goals."
Whatever misgivings Bert had brought with him into the room vanished. Here was treatment as whole-souled, as generous and as spontaneous, as he could ask.
"I was afraid," he said in a burst of confidence, "that perhaps you might not lend me the money."
"You have misjudged me," Old Man Clud wheezed; "but I am used to being misjudged. Every man who goes far in the world has his defamers. If I should tell you the names of men in this town that I have helped you would sit there and look at me in astonishment. But to me a loan is a matter of sacred confidence, and I never reveal secrets. What I lend and what you borrow is nobody's business but ours. Am I not right?"
"Yes, sir."
"There! I always judged you for a young man of understanding. I am a shrewd judge of character. And how much might this sick business of yours need to make it well?"
"About one hundred and fifty dollars," said Bert.
"You have it already," said Old Man Clud. ​He stood up and pushed back the chair and, breathing hard, went over to the safe. For several seconds he tinkered with the combination before he swung open the small, heavy door. From a compartment he took bills—fives, and tens and twenties—and counted out a small pile. These he brought back to the table and set before Bert. And then he mopped his face, and sat down, and seemed to have to wait to recover his breath before he could speak again.
"There, my young friend, is your hundred and fifty dollars, and may your business enjoy the prosperity it deserves. Please count it and tell me if the amount is right. Even the best of us make mistakes. And now that you have your money, it becomes a duty to draw up some papers that will be a record of our transaction. Between you and me there would need to be no paper, but life is uncertain. You might die or I might die, and without writing between us, who would there be to say what money had passed between us to-night? I want to be protected, you want to be protected. Is that not right?"
"Yes, sir. My partner and I signed papers before we started our business."
"A fair proceeding, and one that speaks you credit. If you will bear with me just a moment." He opened the ledger, and took out a loose, printed form, and began to fill it in. By and by it was finished, and he pushed it across the table. ​"And now, my young friend, if you will sign that our negotiations will be at an end."
Bert read the paper haltingly, stumbling over its wordy, legal phraseology. Two of its statements stood out from everything else. One was that the note was payable in sixty days. The other was that he was signing a receipt for $175.
"But you gave me only $150," he cried. "This is wrong."
"No; no. I'm afraid you misunderstand. In a transaction of this kind there is always a bonus—a purchase price, you might say, of the loan. I assure you it is all quite customary."
"But the bank would only charge me interest."
"Then why do you not go to the bank? Ah, my friend, now we are getting at the kernel of the matter. You do not go to the bank because you have no security on which they would advance you anything. That means that, in lending to you, I run a risk. I take a chance. Isit not so? And is it not right that, taking such a chance, I should receive some extra return for the risk I run? Fair, my friend; be fair."
Bert was doing some rapid mental arithmetic. Considering that the loan was to be paid back within two months, Old Man Clud was charging him in excess of 100 per cent interest per annum. The lender seemed to read what was passing in his thoughts.
"Observe," he said, and laid his hand over ​Bert's. The palm was hot and sweaty. "I could deduct my bonus from you now. I could have you sign the note for $150 and then give you only $125. But I am too much aboveboard for that. You asked for $150 and $150 you are getting. I ask you to pay nothing now; my profit must wait. First I give you your opportunity to win that success that your industry so richly deserves, and after your pockets are full of rich plums, then I take my share. Think of what it means to you: success, prosperity, the placing of your career upon a firm foundation. Is that not something to be weighed against a mere bonus of $25?"
Bert continued to stare at the note. Abruptly Old Man Clud's manner changed and he reached for the money.
"Come; my time is valuable and you delay. You need not take it."
Bert was quick to stay him. "I'll take it," he said huskily.
He signed the note; and while he folded the bills and stowed them safely in his pocket, Old Man Clud brought forth a little red memorandum book, held it close to his chest, and entered a notation of the transaction. There was something uncomfortably furtive and secret about the way he did it. Suddenly Bert remembered having seen that book before—that day in the bank when Old Man Clud had turned away from the teller's window jotting down a record of his deposit. And ​that day, too, he had held it almost concealed against his chest.
"My young friend," the lender said, "I wish you every business blessing. I expect you to go far. And do not forget that this little note of ours comes due on January 18."
Bert went out, and down the stairs; and only then did he remember that he had promised Tom Woods to go to his father should anything queer turn up in the affairs of The Shoppers' Service.
Sam was standing in the doorway, waiting and watching, when he came back. "How did it go?" the clerk asked eagerly.
Bert laid the money on the counter.
"He gave it to you? Now we can breathe again. This is a life-saver. You signed a note, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"When is it due?"
"In sixty days."
"He wants his money back fast enough, doesn't he? Well, the Christmas trade will take care of that."
"He made me sign a note for $175," said Bert.
Sam gave acry of indignation. "He did? The blood-sucker! And he's always been calling you 'my fine young friend.' That's friendship, isn't it?" The clerk began to pace the store in agitation, and to scratch his head, and to mutter to himself. Presently his steps slowed. "Anyway," ​he said more cheerfully, "it's probably the best bargain we could have made. The bank wouldn't have advanced us a single penny."
Bert paid practically no attention to Sam's change of viewpoint. "How about an afternoon off?" he demanded abruptly. "Can you stick it out alone to-morrow?"
"All day?"
"No; I'll be in in the evening."
"Got something important on?"
"I want to take a trip. We have only geometry, gym and a study period to-morrow afternoon. I think I could get excused from geometry . . . I'm pretty well up in that."
"You want to visit that bug hunter, I bet." Sam shook his head. "It beats me what you see in that fellow. All right; go along. You were a rescuer to-day; that's worth an afternoon off. Don't forget to put that $150 in the bank."
In the morning Bert deposited the money and hurried to the high school to interview the teacher who taught geometry. He won his excuse, and before one o'clock was on his way to the cabin and the house of glass. Snow would come any day now; something told him that this would be his last visit of the winter.
The trip was his response to another nameless urge. The partnership had secured needed funds, the Christmas season was sure to be their salvation, and yet a vague uneasiness had begun to mas​ter his spirit. Tom Woods had said to go to his father. Had Tom Woods foreseen the coming of yesterday's event? A dozen questions he could not answer crowded into his brain. He intended to tell the Butterfly Man nothing, to ask him nothing. He just wanted to see him. In some strange way he seemed to know that he would find a sustaining strength merely by sitting in the company of his friend.
His feelings with respect to Old Man Clud were mixed. There had been a subtle type of warning in the lender's last words reminding him of the date when payment of the loan would be due. Sometimes he thought that a velvet threat lay under the wheezed and gasped syllables; sometimes he reasoned that it was only natural that a man who had lent money should impress the time of its return upon the borrower. The bonus was another stumbling block. Had Old Man Clud driven a hard, grasping, covetous bargain, or had he done only what anybody would do who took a risk that a bank would refuse? Oh, if he had a mere fraction of his father's business knowledge! And yet his father was the last person in the world to whom he would have taken his doubts and his fears at this moment.
He was aroused from his reverie by sounds that had been growing upon him as he rode along. His ears caught a pounding as of wood upon wood, and a man's deep and throaty voice, rising ​and falling in the sonorous style of country oratory. He pushed down harder on the pedals, rounded a slight turn, and came upon a scene that caused him to apply his brake. The bicycle slowed down, and he swung out of the saddle.
A crowd was gathered in front of a farmhouse set back from the road. The man of sonorous voice was standing on the porch pounding with a gavel against the porch railing. Here and there on the brown autumn lawn were pieces of furniture. It was a nondescript collection gathered from parlor, kitchen and bedrooms; and alien hands pawed it over, and hauled it about, and commented unfeelingly on its value. These things Bert observed in a glance; his interest was fastened on a man and a woman standing dejectedly and forlornly in the doorway of the house.
"Only seventy-five cents for this kitchen table?" the sonorous voice was demanding. "You can't mean it. Why, ladies and gentlemen, this table is as good as new. Not a scratch, not a break, not a loose hinge. Come up and look it over. This table cost seven dollars if it cost a penny, and you offer me seventy-five cents. Who'll make it a dollar. A dollar; a dollar. Do I hear a dollar?"
"Eighty-five," said a voice.
"Eighty-five; eighty-five. Am I offered a dollar? Don't go home regretting that you let a bargain pass you. Am I offered a dollar?"
"A dollar," came from the rear of the crowd.
​"A dollar; a dollar. Who'll make it a dollar ten. Going at a dollar. Once! Twice! Last call. Sold to the gentleman for a dollar."
The woman in the doorway dropped her head, and turned, and went into the house.
Bert walked over to where two young farmhands stood together. "Why are they auctioning the stuff?" he asked.
One of the two spat a stream of tobacco juice. "They got hard up and went down to Springham and borrowed some money from a fellow. They couldn't make the payments and the fellow from Springham is selling them out."
To Bert, at the moment, it came as mighty uncomfortable news. His mouth went dry.
"Any place I can get a drink around here?" he asked.
"There's a well in back of the house."
He went toward the rear, skirting the crowd and passing the porch where the auctioneer was now offering an ice box. A step or two more, and then he stopped with a jerk. Old Man Clud, his coat buttoned to the throat, stood leaning against a tree writing in a little red memorandum book held close to his chest.