Dakota farmers' leader. (Canton, S.D.) 1890-19??, 1911-07-21

until they had "cut down their dis
count to where they could see a little
light"
Cutting down his discount" which,
In common human speech, means con.
verting credit into cash, was just
about as pleasing and as possible a
proposal for Longwood as would be
an invitation to eat up and digest the
machinery in the ten prodigious sto-
ries of his own printing and binding
plant. And Longwood, for the first
time in his business career, was
learning what a panic really e
to the man who is compelled to crawl
into the bank on his knees, instead
Of walking into 1t with a bag In his
hand and taking what he needs for
ready money transactions.
When Bostwick wanted to be mean
he would wrinkle up his face as If he
were trying to look at the sun. His
raised upper lip displayed a row Of
yellow teeth, the general effect being
one of depression in an infinite de-
gree to the party who was second in
the contract. That party Longwood
now found himself; and when he let
himself take in the visage of the
banker, and measured up the meaning
of it, he knew that an appeal to his
sympathies would be about as effec-
tual as a brilliant argument addressed
to the Saskatchewan wind in mid
winter.
While the printer and binder was
staring into the black abyss of abso-
Lutte failure, he was simultaneously
figuring on the close contiguity and
the quick continuity OF the results
that he knew would follow the smash.
When o are kicked out into the
street a paupsr at he age of fifty
five, with a wife twenty years your
Junior, who has stuck to o just for
the sake of the money. and who will
abandon you like a shot the very mo-
ment the touring car and the house
go up In the flames. and particularly
when you have a little failing for the
liquor, the prospects are, II q financial
panic happens to be overshadowing
the world, that you will rapidly de-
generate into a greasy hobo upon
whose mystic atmosphere of total ir-
resolution and Of beds in strange
places neither gods nor men can
smile.
That was the way it came up to
Longwood, or at least that is the
way he told me it came. But as he
was swallowing the brackish thought,
and trying to reconcile himself to the
notion Of that sort of thing as an ev-
eryday diet, with the poorhouse and
the dissecting table at the end of it.
his attention was suddenly diverted
by the sight of Bostwick's right ear.
The top of the ear was customarily
obscured by the rather long hair of
the banker, and in the careless mo.
lions he had been making with his
hand Bostwick had accidentally
brushed the hair aside, and Long
wood for the first time observed that
about half an inch Of the top of the
ear was missing.
Longwood could hear Bostwiek's
voice telling him about the reduction
of discount" and money on three's,"
and other things of the kind that
everybody talks about when a panic
is in the land, but he was not paying
the slightest attention to what the
banker a saying. He was trying
with all the vigor of his brain to re-
construct in his imagination a thing
the dim, gigantic outlines Of which
flung their shadows across the back
ground of his memory, as If the thing
itself had happened to him in a
vague past in some other life on some
other planet, a thousand years before
the world was created, when banks
were not and the reduction of dis
count "a a theory yet to be tried.
In the very middle of 1t he felt a
strange apopletic choking and the on
coming of a storm in his head; and
when the storm and the choking had
cleared ;-way he looked Bostwick
squarely in the eye and laughed
aloud.
you think it's a joke, do your"
Bostwick said to him. with his solar
grin and yellow teeth well to the
front. Well, you will dam soon find
that it isn't"
He rose and began to finger the
papers on his desk as a clear invita-
ton to Longwood to take himself
away.
"Bostwick," said Longwood. as II
he were recalling a pleasant little in
cident of a hunting trip in the Cana
dian wilds, e" wonder Whatever hap
pened to the fellows hat came that
time for the men Of the Tropic Dawn?
I'm hanged If I wouldn't like to
know"
He had his eyes trained on Bost-
wick's face and the face blanched I'M
der the fire. And then did Bostwick
in his own turn train his eyes on
Longwood's features and stare at
them with the penetration of the sub
tlest and most q~uick-acting poison.
But it was clear that Longwood to
him was a totally in~decipherable
writing. He gently moved himself
round to his chair and let himself
lapse into It, with a perceptible sha-
king Of the knees.
1.-THE Tropic DAWN" he queried,
looking away from Longwood as If to
try out his memory. THAT Tropic
| Dawn business was a long time ago.
I suppose you meal the fellows that
were picked up. Yes, 1T was a long
time age. Outlawed long ago."
His eyes were still trained on Long
woods face. his memory wringing it.
self without the slightest Issue.