A Cool Million (2 page)

Lem
considered this advice for a while. When he spoke again, it was with courage
and determination.

“You are right, sir. I’ll go off to
seek my fortune.” Our hero’s eyes shone with a light that bespoke a high heart.
“Good,” said Mr. Whipple, and he was genuinely glad. “As I said before, the
world is an oyster that but waits for hands to open it. Bare hands are best,
but have you any money?”

“Something less than a dollar,” said
Lem
sadly.

“It is very little, my young friend,
but it might suffice, for you have an honest face and that is more than gold.
But I had thirty-five dollars when I left home to make my way, and it would be
nice if you .had at least as much.”

“Yes, it would be nice,” agreed
Lem
.

“Have you any collateral?” asked Mr.
Whipple.

“Collateral?” repeated
Lem
, whose business education was so limited that he did
not even know what the word meant.

“Security for a loan,” said Mr.
Whipple.

“No, sir, I’m afraid not.”

“Your mother has a cow, I think?”

“Yes, Old Sue.” The boy’s face fell
as he thought of parting with that faithful servitor.

“I believe that I could lend you
twenty-five dollars on her, maybe thirty,” said Mr. Whipple.

“But she cost more than a hundred,
and besides she supplies us with milk, butter and cheese, the main part of our
simple victuals.”

“You do not understand,” said Mr.
Whipple patiently. “Your mother can keep the cow until the note that she will
sign comes due in sixty days from now. This new obligation will be an added
incentive to spur you on to success.”

“But what if I fail?” asked
Lem
. Not that he was losing heart, be it said, but he was
young and wanted encouragement.

Mr. Whipple understood how the lad
felt and made an effort to reassure him.

“America,” he said with great
seriousness, “is the land of opportunity. She takes care of the honest and
industrious and never fails them as long as they are both. This is not a matter
of opinion, it is one of faith. On the day that Americans stop believing it, on
that day will America be lost.

“Let me warn you that you will find
in the world a certain few scoffers who will laugh at you and attempt to do you
injury. They will tell you that John D. Rockefeller was a thief and that Henry
Ford and other great men are also thieves. Do not believe them. The story of
Rockefeller and of Ford is the story of every great American, and you should
skive to make it your story. Like them, you were born poor and on a farm. Like
them, by honesty and industry, you cannot fail to succeed.”

It is needless to say that the words
of the ex-President encouraged our young hero just as similar ones have
heartened the youth of this country ever since it was freed from the irksome
British yoke. He vowed then and there to go and do as Rockefeller and Ford had
done.

Mr. Whipple drew up some papers for
the lad’s mother to sign and ushered him out of the den. When he had gone, the
great man turned to the picture of Lincoln that hung on the wall and silently
communed with it.

Our hero’s way home led through a
path that ran along the Rat River. As he passed a wooded stretch he cut a stout
stick with a thick gnarled top. He was twirling this club, as a bandmaster does
his baton, when he was startled by a young girl’s shriek. Turning his head, he
saw a terrified figure pursued by a fierce dog. A moment’s glance showed him
that it was Betty
Prail
, a girl with whom he was in
love in a boyish way.

Betty recognized him at the same
moment.

“Oh, save me, Mr. Pitkin!” she
exclaimed, clasping her hands.

“I will,” said
Lem
resolutely.

Armed with the stick he had most
fortunately cut, he rushed between the girl and her pursuer and brought the
knob down with full force on the dog’s back. The attention of the furious
animal—a large bulldog—was diverted to his assailant, and with a fierce howl he
rushed upon
Lem
. But our hero was wary and expected
the attack. He jumped to one side and brought the stick down with great force
on the dog’s head. The animal fell, partly stunned, his quivering tongue
protruding from his mouth.

“It won’t do to leave him so,”
thought
Lem
; “when he revives he’ll be as dangerous
as ever.”

He dealt the prostrate brute two
more blows which settled its fate. The furious animal would do no more harm.

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Pitkin!”
exclaimed Betty, a trace of color returning to her cheeks. “I was terribly
frightened.” “I don’t wonder,” said
Lem
. “The brute
was certainly ugly.”

“How brave you are!” the young lady
said in admiration.

“It doesn’t take much courage to hit
a dog on the head with a stick,” said
Lem
modestly.

“Many boys would have run,” she
said.

“
What,
and
left you unprotected?”
Lem
was indignant. “None but a
coward would have done that.”

“Tom Baxter was walking with me, and
he ran away.”

“Did he see the dog chasing you?”

“Yes.”

“And what did he do?”

“He jumped over a stone wall.”

“All I can say is that that isn’t my
style,” said
Lem
. “Do you see how the dog froths at
the mouth? I believe he’s mad.”

“How fearful!” exclaimed Betty with
a
shudder.
“Did you suspect that before?”

“Yes, when I first saw him.”

“And yet you dared to meet him?”

“It was safer than to run,” said
Lem
, making little of the incident. “I wonder whose dog it
was?
”

“I’ll tell you,” said a brutal
voice.

Turning his head,
Lem
beheld a stout fellow about three years older than
himself, with a face in which the animal seemed to predominate. It was none
other than Tom Baxter, the town bully.

“What have you been doing to my dog?”
demanded Baxter with a snarl.

Addressed in this tone,
Lem
thought it unnecessary to throw away politeness on such
a brutal customer. “Killing him,” he answered shortly.

“What
business
have
you killing my dog?” demanded the bully with much anger.

“It was your business to keep the
brute locked up, where he wouldn’t do any harm,” said
Lem
.
“Besides, you saw him attack Miss Frail. Why didn’t you interfere?”

“I’ll flog you within an inch of
your life,” said Baxter with an oath.

“You’d better not try it,” said
Lem
coolly. “I suppose you think I ought to have let the
dog bite Miss Frail.” “He wouldn’t have bitten her.”

“He would too. He was chasing her
with that intention.” “It was only in sport.”

“I suppose he was frothing at the
mouth only in sport,” said
Lem
. “The dog was mad. You
ought to thank me for killing him because he might have bitten you.”

“That don’t go down,” said Baxter
coarsely. “It’s much too thin.”

“It’s true,” said Betty Frail,
speaking for the first time.

“Of course you’ll stand up for him,”
said the butcher boy
( for
that was Baxter’s business
), “but that’s neither here nor there. I paid five dollars for that dog, and if
he
don’t
pay me what I gave, I’ll mash him.”

“I shall do nothing of the sort,”
said
Lem
quietly. “A dog like that ought to be
killed, and no one has any right to let him run loose, risking the lives of
innocent people. The next time you get five dollars you ought to invest it
better.”

“Then you won’t pay me the money?”
cried the bully in a passion. “I’ll break your head.”

“Come on,” said
Lem
,
“I’ve got something to say about that,” and he squared off scientifically.

“Oh, don’t fight him, Mr. Pitkin,”
said Betty, very much distressed. “He is much stronger than you.”

“He’ll find that out soon enough, I’m
thinking,” growled
Lem’s
opponent.

That Tom Baxter was not only larger
but stronger than our hero was no doubt true. On the other hand he did not know
how to use his strength. It was merely undisciplined brute force. If he could
have got
Lem
around the waist the latter would have
been at his mercy, but our hero knew that well enough and didn’t choose to
allow it. He was a pretty fair boxer, and stood on his defense, calm and wary.

When Baxter rushed in, thinking to
seize his smaller opponent, he was greeted by two rapid blows in the face, one
of which struck him on the nose, the other in the eye, the effect of both being
to make his head spin.

“I’ll mash you for that,” he yelled
in a frenzy of rage, but as he rushed in again he never thought to guard his
face. The result was a couple of more blows, the other eye and his mouth being
assailed this time.

Baxter was astonished. He had
expected to “chaw up”
Lem
at the first onset. Instead
of that, there stood
Lem
cool and unhurt, while he
could feel that his nose and mouth were bleeding and both his eyes were rapidly
closing.

He stopped short and regarded
Lem
as well as he could through his injured optics,
then
surprised our hero by smiling. “Well,” he said, shaking
his head sheepishly, “you’re the better man. I’m a rough customer, I expect,
but I know when I’m bested. There’s my hand to show that I don’t bear malice.”

Lem
gave
his hand in return without fear that there might be craft in the bully’s offer
of friendship. The former was a fair-dealing lad himself and he thought that
everyone was the same. However, no sooner did Baxter have a hold of his hand
than he jerked the poor
boy into his
embrace and squeezed him insensible.

Betty screamed and fainted, so great
was her anxiety for
Lem
. Hearing her scream, Baxter
dropped his victim to the ground and walked to where the young lady lay in a
dead faint. He stood over her for a few minutes admiring her beauty. His little
pig-like eyes shone with bestiality.

It is with reluctance that I leave
Miss
Prail
in the lecherous embrace of Tom Baxter to
begin a new chapter, but I cannot with propriety continue my narrative beyond
the point at which the bully undressed that unfortunate lady.

However, as Miss
Prail
is the heroine of this romance, I would like to use this opportunity to
acquaint you with a little of her past history.

On her twelfth birthday, Betty
became an orphan with the simultaneous death of her two parents in a fire which
also destroyed what ‘little property might have been left her. In this fire, or
rather at it, she also lost something which, like her parents, could never be
replaced.

The
Prail
farm was situated some three miles from Ottsville on a rough dirt road, and the
amateur fire company, to whose ministrations all the fires in the district were
left, was not very enthusiastic about dragging their apparatus to it. To tell
the truth, the Ottsville Fire Company consisted of a set of young men who were
more interested in dirty stories, checkers and applejack than they were in fire
fighting. When the news of the catastrophe arrived at the fire house, the
volunteer firemen were all inebriated, and their chief, Bill Baxter (father to
the man in whose arms we left our heroine), was dead drunk.

After many delays, the fire company
finally arrived at the
Prail
farm, but instead of
trying to quench the flames they immediately set to work and looted the place.

Betty, although
only twelve years old at the time, was a well-formed little girl with the soft,
voluptuous lines of a beautiful woman.
Dressed only in a cotton
nightgown, she was wandering among the firemen begging them to save her
parents, when Bill Baxter noticed her budding form and enticed her into the
woodshed.

In the morning, she was found lying
naked on the ground by some neighbors and taken into their house. She had a bad
cold, but remembered nothing of what Bill Baxter had done to her. She mourned
only the loss of her parents.

After a small collection had been
taken up by the minister to purchase an outfit, she was sent to the county
orphan asylum. There she remained until her fourteenth year, when she was put
out as a maid of all work to the
Slemps
, a prominent
family of Ottsville, the head of which, Lawyer
Slemp
,
we already know.

As one can well imagine, all was not
beer and skittles in this household for the poor orphan. If she had been less
beautiful, perhaps things would have gone better for her. As it was, however,
Lawyer
Slemp
had two ugly daughters and a shrewish
wife who were very jealous of their beautiful servant. They saw to it that she
was badly dressed and that she wore her hair only in the ugliest possible
manner. Yet despite these things, and although she had to wear men’s shoes and
coarse cotton stockings, our heroine was a great deal more attractive than the
other women of the household.