Читать книгу Fighting Byng - A. Stone - Страница 7

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I won't try to account for Byng's impression that I, though far away, was flogging him along to achievement. Such influence is more common than might be supposed, so common, in fact, that the wonder is that it is not labeled and tagged by everyone, instead of remaining a part of the equipment of first-class secret-service men, and accomplished scoundrels.

Criminologists understand it. It is the libertine's long suit. Power to obsess through concentrated thought. Now that is as substantial as railroad spikes and can nail its victims to the flooring of the bottomless pits, or carry them safely, chastely through a life well spent.

Aaron Burr was a most notable disciple of thought transference. He prepared his victim's mind at safe distance, so that the finish was a mere matter of his own convenience, and it is written he never failed. Women of all classes, well-meaning and virtuous, are unable to understand this phenomena, until too late, in many cases. Early training and intuition are the safe-guards. But good influences are more powerful and account for more wonderful occurrences. Power of analysis, derived from education and experience, enable men, and especially women, to overcome their impulses; to keep their minds open and cautious, thus enabling them to unconsciously shield themselves against auto-suggestion from cunning rascals. I would not offer this if it did not have a great deal to do with the life of Howard Byng.

When I awakened next morning I could have imagined myself in a first-class hotel. The room furnishings were of the best, with a generous bath and every convenience. But I had only to look out of the cabin window at the river and the great cut-over land beyond, with its blackened stumps grinning above the stunted growth, like numerous outpost sentinels of the infernal regions, to readjust myself to my exact location. I was surprised to see a small private yacht anchored, amid-stream, just off the mill.

What Byng called his guest cabin was a good-sized bungalow, on higher ground some distance below the plant along the river. It had the open hall of the Southern type and a veranda all around, every room being private, with entrance from either hall or veranda. While the old darkey prepared breakfast I looked out over the one-story concrete mill and the smoking plant below, still in full blast, running twenty-four hours a day, as all paper mills must. Farther back were comfortable cabins for the negro help.

Byng soon came up and was thoroughly elated. He took me by the arm and led me to the other side of the cabin and pointed out the yacht in the river. "I'm mighty glad he has come while you are here," he said. "Somehow I feel safe now. That yacht belongs to a Mr. Purdue. Did you ever hear of the Purdues of New York?" he paused to inquire anxiously.

I thought I could recall a Purdue, once a prominent railroad man.

"That's him, that's what he wrote. He's got twenty thousand acres of stump land, mostly pine, a little gum and chestnut, joinin' mine on the north and up the river, and wants to sell out to me. It's a big deal and I want your advice. We've been dickering by mail for some time and finally he promised to run down, but I never expected he would. His boat isn't very big, but she's deep and I don't see how he ever got up the river. Must have caught the ebb and had luck," he went on, still excited. "He seems to have his family, too. I saw two or three wimmen moving about," he added, as if that was an added responsibility, or an important event. Outside of negroes, women were seldom seen in that desolate country.

"You see," continued Byng, as we sat down to breakfast, "I've got to be careful. As near as I can figure, I am the only one who knows how to make enough out of my turpentine and rosin from pine stumps so that my paper product is all velvet. They know I do it and are trying their heads off to find out my method. But they never will. I'll tell you and that's all. Just as you said, years ago, the soil goes clear down and'll never stop raisin' cotton. I'm going to take you out to-day and show you the class of cotton I'm raisin' where I pulled the stumps out. I've got a lot of stump land, that'll last a long time the way I'm going now, but I'd like to have enough to last all my life, and this old codger has got it joinin' me, and it ain't worth a damn cent to anyone else. Now do you see why I'm a little excited?" he asked, with a broad, cordial smile, "and do you see the fight me and this feller is goin' to have if he really wants to get rid of payin' non-resident taxes? Of course, he's a business man and sharp, much sharper than me. That's why I am so glad you're here to sort of watch over me in the deal, and see when I'm going wrong. What do you think I'd better do?"

"Well, I don't know; if you have written——"

"No, I ain't. I got bit once writin' letters. And once is enough for me," he interrupted sharply.

"Then the only way is to let things take a natural course. Let him raise the trade question. Invite them ashore, for they have probably been cruising for some time and are tired of their cramped quarters in the small yacht. Let them occupy this bungalow all to themselves. You can find some other place for——"

"Find another place for you!" he interrupted, dropping his knife and fork. "Hell's Bells! Me find another place for you! Not if he had all of Southern Georgia to sell for a penny. You are in my best guest chamber and you're goin' to stay there, suh. You can stay on the rest of your life and have Uncle George do nuthin' but wait on you all the time. That's my orders," he added, with perfect sincerity, and with such grace as only a Southern man knows how to extend to a trusted friend. "Besides, unless he's got a big family, there's room to spare."

"Well, you get the idea. Be nice to him, but wait for him to talk trade. You know how much more chesty and louder a rooster crows when he is in his own barnyard and among his own hens?"

"Yes—yes, I've seen 'em at it, they're right laughable," he replied, quite able to see the application.

"Well, you are on your own ground, in your own plant, and while you needn't crow so loud, you can keep your chest away out."

"Do you think I have done so much? It has come so slow, mighty hard, so much plannin'. Machinery is hard to learn, but I got it down fine now—engines, dynamos, and all."

"Yes—you have astonished me, Howard; your all-around progress is amazing, and in another five years you will be the most prominent man in Southern Georgia."

"You can't ever know what it means to me to hear you say that, for"—he hesitated again to control himself—"for I would still be a Georgia Cracker if it wasn't for you," and unashamed he looked at me squarely with moistened eyes.

"An'—an'"—he halted again, contemplating as anyone might the one thing apparently unattainable. His lips quivered as he looked out past the plant and cabins to the growing cotton, the stump land and swamp which his genius had converted into a garden of usefulness and beauty. Then, with even voice under control, he went on, "I ain't much more'n a Cracker yit. I talk Cracker an' I think Cracker, that's why I ain't no match for Purdue even when it comes to tradin'. I ain't got time to go to college. What can I do? There's no livin' being I'd take advice of that kind from 'cept you. My dad and mam, I suppose, did the best they could, but they didn't give me much but life and an appetite for moonshine. We come from good English stock, but it's run down. I'm asking you what I can do for myself, 'cause I know you kin tell me, can't yer?"

"Howard," I began, delighted that he could see himself, and that he was ready and willing to struggle for better things. "Are you making money now?"

"Yes, I'm making money. Every roll of paper that drops off that machine is clear profit, worth around fifty dollars, and you know they come off pretty fast, but, shuckins!—ye soon find money don't git ye much. It's more fun to see the black stumps turn into white paper and the cotton grow where they cum from!"

"You are better off now than most college graduates," I replied, "but you do need better English. It will help you to think better. Write to a northern college to send you a sort of tutor secretary, give him some work about the office, watch him, and learn to talk as he does. Insist that he corrects you every time you make a mistake. Get the best dictionary, learn how to use it, and keep it handy all the time. Also an encyclopedia, and an atlas. It strikes me that you are already long on arithmetic." He laughed at this thought.

"An' I'll git rid of my Cracker talk, will I?" he asked, his face brightening in delightful anticipation.

"Yes, in a year."

"I knew there was a way, an' you could tell me," said he. Then he linked his arm in mine and dragged me out in the open for a little look around the place.