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Updated: June 27, 2025
One of these, an old woman, toothless and bent, hobbled to our office and asked for Mr. Elkins. He was busy, and so I received her. "It's about that quarter-block with the Donegal ruin on it," said Jim; "the one I showed you yesterday. Offer her five thousand, one-fourth down, balance in one, two, and three years, eight per cent." "I wanted to ask Mr. Elkins about me home," said she.
Elkins kept me well informed regarding Lattimore affairs; and the Herald followed me home. Jim's letters were long typewritten communications, dictated at speed, and mailed, sometimes one a day, at other times at intervals of weeks. "This is a sure-enough 'winter of our discontent," one of these letters runs, "but the scope of our operations will widen as the frost comes out of the ground.
Elkins," said he, "has to a wonderful degree identified himself with the material progress of the city. He is constantly bringing here enterprising and energetic business men; and we could better afford to lose many an older citizen." I asked Mr. Hinckley as to the length of his own residence in Lattimore. "I helped to plat the town, sir," said he.
It paralleled Buck's own private opinion, especially in regard to the southern range; and the vague suspicions in the foreman's mind disappeared for good and all. Needless to say Elkins was a welcome visitor at the ranch houses and was regarded as a good fellow. At the Bar-20 he found only two men who would not thaw to him, and he was possessed of too much tact to try any persuasive measures.
"Wal, I declare, I'm glad to see yeh!" said he, as he grasped my hand. "I'd a'most forgot yeh, till Mr. Elkins told me you remembered my whalin' them Dutch boys at a scale onct." I had had no recollection of him; yet form and voice seemed vaguely familiar. I assured him that my memory for names and faces was excellent. After being duly presented to Mrs. Barslow, he urged us to alight and come in.
Why had the other left so plain a trail, why had he reached up and broken twigs that projected above his head as he passed? Why had he kicked aside a small stone, leaving a patch of moist, bleached grass to tell where it had lain? Elkins had stumbled here, but there were no toe marks to tell of it.
The doctor lingered as he went past the shop; but the blacksmith did not speak, and he walked on; and he passed others, his old neighbors, as he went. This was hardly pleasant, though it might be the thing he desired. He walked on until he came to the red farm-gate of Farmer Elkins, Nancy's uncle. There he stopped. Under the chestnut-trees, before the door, the farmer sat.
The big blue eyes were fairly bulging, like two monster morning-glories, as Elkins, putting the note carefully in his jacket pocket, said, softly: "Ef I don't get thet 'ere letter into Jones's hands, you may have me drummed out o' camp by the mule-drivers." "I believe you, and trust you. I shall be here to-morrow morning early, and shall hope to hear something from you. Good-by." "Good-by, miss.
"By heavens!" he cried, "you've hit it, Elkins! And it can be done! From to-night, no more paper railroads for us; it must be grading-gangs and ties, and steel rails!" So, also, there was good fighting when Cornish wired from New York for Elkins and me to come to his aid in placing our Lattimore & Great Western bonds. Of course, we never expected to build this railway with our own funds.
It struck him that this was not the first time that he had felt nearly dead after imbibing much whisky. "But the Perfessor?" he asked feebly. "Professor Adam Chawner," said Elkins in a clear voice, "is in a strait-waistcoat at the County Hospital. He will get over this, but not so quickly as you will. He is quite mad for the moment about a deadly microbe which only exists in his imagination."
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