youngsters in there with their battles
before 'em."

"There hasn't been such a gathering as this in ten years. Not since the
night Darley Champers herded us into the schoolhouse and blew a boom down
our throats through a goosequill," Cyrus Bennington declared.

"See that black thing away across the prairie east of Aydelot's grove.
Wait till the moon gets out from that cloud. Now!" Todd Stewart directed
the eyes of all to a tall black object distinct in the moonlight.

"That's the Cloverdale Farmers' Company's elevator. Looks like a
lighthouse stretching up in that sea of wheat."

"There are plenty of derelicts in that sea as well as some human derelicts
left afloat," Jim said, with a laugh. "Let's take the census."

"Begin with Darley Champers," Asher suggested.

"Not present. Who got his excuse?" Jim inquired.

"He sent it by me," Horace Carey spoke up. "Business still keeping him
busy. He's a humane man."

"Up to a point he is," John Jacobs broke in. "Let's be fair. He is a
large-sized boomer and a small-sized rascal. A few deals won't bear the
light of day, but mainly they are inside the law. I've let him handle all
but my grazing land around Wykerton. He's done well by me. But he's been
at his line a quarter of a century and he'll end where he began--in a real
estate office over in Wykerton, trying to get something for nothing and
calling it business."

"Horace Carey?" Jim Shirley called next.

"Here," Carey replied.

"With a big H," Todd Stewart declared. "Same doctor of the old school. Why
don't you get married or take a trip to India, Doctor? Not that we aren't
satisfied all over with you as you are, though, and wouldn't hear to your
doing either one. You belong to all of us now."

"I may have a call to a bigger practice some day, a service that will make
you proud of your former honorable townsman. At present I'm satisfied,"
Carey said, with a smile.

Four years later the men remembered this reply and the attractive face of
the speaker, the sound of his voice, and the whole magnetic presence of
the man.

"John Jacobs?" Shirley called next.

"The merchant prince of Careyville," Asher Aydelot declared. "The
money-loaning Shylock. Didn't let the boom so much as turn one hair black
or white. Land owner and stock raiser of the Wolf Creek Valley and hater
of saloons seven days in the week. Whatever it may mean in New York and
Cincinnati and Chicago, being a Jew means being a gentleman in this corner