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To be considered a man of wisdom by Scattergood Baines was a distinction in Coldriver even in those days, and for a man actually to be consulted and asked for advice by the ample hardware merchant was to lift him into an intellectual class to which few could aspire. "I hope he gin you good advice, Scattergood," said Grandmother Penny. "Allus does.
"Clutch all partners for a once and a half!" "Swing your gals and swing 'em high!" "Prance, scuffle and scrape!" Slade came in alone as the first dance was ended. A croupier and lookout, imported from Coldriver for the event, opened Brill's roulette layout in one corner, a game he usually operated himself on the occasions when his patrons chose to try their fortune against the bank.
"Some mistake," he said; "I want the owner of the Coldriver Valley Railroad." "It may be a mistake," said Scattergood. "Calculate it is a mistake to own a railroad. But 'tain't the only mistake I ever made." "You own the road?" "Calculate to." Evidently the stranger was not impressed by Scattergood in a manner to arouse him to a notable exertion of courtesy.
North of him the hills lifted above the sage, angling with the directions so that four miles along the Three Bar road that branched off to the left would bring him to their foot and a like distance along the main fork saw its termination at Brill's store, situated in a dent in the base of the hills, the end of the Coldriver Trail.
A few days after that Coldriver knew that Parson Hooper had asked the hand of Selina from her father and had been rejected with language and almost with violence. Then a strange thing took place. If Jason had married Selina without opposition, his congregation would have been enraged. He might have been forced from his pulpit.
"You come to Coldriver on business, didn't you? Money business?" "Why I came is my own affair." "Certain.... Certain.... But things gets noised about. Things has got noised about concernin' a paper that stands betwixt you and half of the Beatty estate. Heard 'em myself." Scattergood waggled the envelope.
When he came out of that service the mischief was done he had been converted to the tenets of immersion and straightway withdrew from the church of his birth to enter the fold of its bitterest rival in Coldriver, if it were possible for the Baptists to be bitterer rivals of the Congregationalist than the Methodists and Universalists were. Coldriver's population was less than four hundred.
I calc'late in the circumstances, though, I'm most entitled to what I kin salvage out of the wreck." Now the Coldriver Dam and Boom Company, Scattergood Baines president and manager, was ready for business, which was to take the logs of Messrs. Crane and Keith and drive them down the river at the rate of sixty cents per thousand feet.
Scattergood chatted on, apparently not interested. "All the dams, booms, cribbings, improvements, and property of the Coldriver Dam and Boom Company ..." the sheriff read. "Including contracts and charter," amended Scattergood. "Including contracts and charter," agreed the sheriff, and Scattergood continued his chat. Bidding began. It was not brisk or exciting.
"Tim," he said, "you owe me a leetle bill. This hain't a dun, but I got a mite of work to be done, and seein' things wasn't brisk with you, I figgered you might want to work it out jest to keep busy." "Sure," said Tim. Whereupon Scattergood elevated himself to the seat beside Tim, and was driven to the spot he had selected for the Coldriver terminal of his railroad.