rkships in your dry goods emporium, and your
farmers, who imagine themselves each a Cincinnatus called to office, will
be asking for appointment as deputy county assessor or courthouse
custodian. Few things can so unfit a Kansas fellow for the real business
of life as a term in the lower house of the Kansas legislature. If you are
a merchant, I'm a farmer, and we will both be booming the state when these
present-day boomers are gone back East to wife's folks, blaming Kansas for
their hard luck. Now, mark my words. But to change the subject," Asher
said smiling, "I thought we should have company for dinner. I saw Darley
Champers and another fellow head in here before us. Darley is in clover
now, planning to charter a town for every other section on Grass River.
Did you know the man who was with him?"

"That's one fly-by-night calling himself Thomas Smith. Innocent name and
easy to lose if you don't want it. Not like Gimpke or Aydelot, now. He's
from Wilmington, Delaware--maybe."

"You seem to doubt his genuineness," Asher remarked.

"I don't believe he will assay well," Jacobs agreed. "I've doubted him
since the day he landed in Carey's Crossing fifteen years ago. Inside of
an hour and a half I caught him and Champers in a consultation so secret
they fastened newspapers across the window to keep from being seen."

"Where were you meanwhile?"

"Up on the roof, fixing the sign the wind had blown loose. When they saw
me through the uncovered upper pane, they shaded that, too. I've little
interest in a man like that."

"Does he come here often?" Asher inquired.

"He's here and away, but he never sets foot in Careyville. My guess is
that he's a part of the 'Co.' of 'Champers and Co.' and that Hans Wyker is
the rest of it. Also that in what they can get by fair means, each of the
trio reserves the right to act alone and independently of the other two,
but when it comes to a cut-throat game, they combine as readily as
hydrogen and sulphur and oxygen; and, combined, they have the same effect
on a proposition that sulphuric acid has on litmus paper. But this is all
only a Jew's guess, of course. For myself, I have business with only one
of the three, Wyker. He doesn't like my sheep, evidently, because he knows
I keep track of his whisky selling in this town and keep the law forever
hanging over him. But I've sworn under high heaven to fight that curse to
humanity wherever I find it threatening, and under high heaven I'll do