Satan's Bushel (6 page)

In that very instant he was startled by a whispering that arose everywhere at once, grew louder, came swiftly nearer, and became suddenly a prolonged hiss. It ceased as abruptly as it began. A little gust of night wind had swept the wheat. He knew this. He saw the wheat running in the wind, saw it change color with the play of the starlight upon the lighter underside of its green attire. Nevertheless he was shaken down to his toes. Knowing what it was did not cancel the emotion. It occurred again a few minutes later and again it shook him. He did not care to hear it a third time and so changed his mind about walking the night out. Instead he turned back and found the town.

The next morning at breakfast he asked if there was a grain elevator in the vicinity. There were three. He went to the nearest one. A load of wheat was standing on the scale and three men were disputing about it. One was a farmer, whose grain it was. He was on the wagon seat, slantwise, holding the reins loosely and turned his gaze slowly between the other two. The grain buyer stood in the high doorway, half his length showing above the wagon. He wore a round felt hat and was covered with the fine gray glaze that comes from contact with grain. It is not the impalpable powder that marks a miller and makes him pale. It is less opaque, lies over color transparently like a bloom, and gives the skin a kind of sheen.

The third man was a figure. He could see into the wagon from the ground. He stood on one foot; the other rested on the wheel hub. His hands were knit and the bent left arm lay on the high edge of the wagon box. His aspect was mainly sardonic. The day was very warm; yet he wore coat, waistcoat, collar and tie; a muffler hung loosely about his neck, the ends dangling. His age was perhaps sixty.

He and the grain buyer were looking at each other steadily. The grain buyer was angry. A red glow showed through the glaze on his cheek bones. The old man was ironically suave.

“No. 2,” said the grain buyer doggedly.

“No. I,” said the old man. “Now we’ve said it three times.”

They were disputing about the grade of the grain in the wagon, whether it should be called No. I or No. 2.

“Take it away yonder,” said the grain buyer.

“Yonder’s a place you’re not thinking of,” said the old man. “We’re going to sell it here. It isn’t as if you were full and didn’t want any wheat. You’ve offered to buy it for No. 2, which means you want it if you can undergrade it.”

“‘Tain’t yours anyhow,” said the grain buyer, looking at the farmer on the wagon seat, who just then looked away, apparently content to let his protagonist settle it.

“Nor yours,” said the old man. “Not till you’ve bought it as No. I, and no dockage. You’ve got a record, young man. A record. Two years ago you were declared incompetent to buy grain. The state board of inspectors suspended you and closed your elevator. You were competent enough. That wasn’t it. What you took in as No. 3 at one door went out as No. 2 at the other. Grain improved one grade over night just by association with you. It got educated. This wheat you’re looking at is already educated. If you can’t see your way clear to buy it as No. I we’ll drive it all the way over to Hutchinson and report you to the state inspectors. But you will see your way clear. And when you have you will mix this fine No. I wheat with a lot of musty No. 3 you’ve got inside, one bushel to five, and sell the lot for No. 2.... I know you.”

The grain buyer, leaning over the wagon, plunged his arms into the grain several times in different places; lifting them with the palms of his hands upturned he raised wheat from the bottom and let it fall again in yellow cascades. Bending still farther, with his hands on the edge of the wagon, he brought his nose to the places where the grain had been upheaved and sniffed for odors. Then he stood up and scanned it with his eye, betraying indecision.

“No smut, no burn, no garlic,” said the old man. “I see you looking at it. Scripture says if thy right eye offend three, pluck it out. Your left alone would be enough to try the children of men. It would so magnify two grains of oats in a wagonload of wheat as to make a pound per bushel dockage. Get the kettle.”

The grain buyer reached inside the door and picked up from the floor his test kettle—a one-quart brass measure attached to a hand-beam scale so graduated that the reading at the point where the sliding weight balances the kettleful of grain is exactly the weight of the wheat per bushel. He filled the kettle to overflowing, cut it exactly level with a gentle, slicing motion of the hand, and held it up to read the weight.

“Sixty-one pounds,” said the old man. “One pound over the standard. I know without looking. Now sieve it.”

Pretending to be deaf the grain buyer emptied the kettle into the wagon, disappeared inside, stooping to set the kettle down, and reappeared with several sieves in his hands. For a moment he hesitated. Then he cast the sieves into the darkness behind him, and leaned against the door jamb, with his feet crossed, looking bored and disgusted.

“Dump it,” he said.

The old man took his foot off the wheel hub and began walking about with his gaze on the ground, his hands behind him, waiting for the farmer to unload. Once he stopped suddenly and gave Dreadwind a keen looking over. They did not speak.

Unloading the grain was a simple matter. At one end of the scale platform a trapdoor lifted. The other end of the scale platform began to rise, wagon and all, and the rear end of the wagon having been opened, the grain flowed into the unloading pit and was gone. It took only a minute altogether. The farmer went around to the office to be paid. When he returned with the proceeds in his hand he offered some money to the old man. Dreadwind could not see how much. It was probably the difference between what the farmer alone would have got for his wheat as No. 2 and what the old man had bullied the buyer into paying for it as No. 1, and that difference might have been five cents a bushel, or five dollars on the load. The old man declined the money with an indignant gesture.

“I don’t do that for money,” he said. “Not that.”

The farmer was embarrassed. They drove off together, sitting far apart on the wagon seat, with a feeling of strangeness between them.

The grain buyer was still standing in the doorway with his feet crossed.

“A tough customer,” said Dreadwind. “Who is he?”

Wearily the grain buyer withdrew his gaze from the sky, measured and comprehended Dreadwind, then stepped inside and slammed the door.

D
READWIND walked back to the hotel, revolying in his mind a project and thinking at the same time on what he had seen. Thus was wheat handled. It had taken a farmer with assistance twenty minutes to sell a wagon load of wheat. That was 100 bushels. In the wheat pit the minimum quantity of wheat that can be bought and sold—the gambling unit—is 5000 bushels, and it changes hand by signal in the twinkling of an eye. How different! The difference between real and imaginary wheat. And how strange all this environment was to a wheat gambler!

The hotel was such a structural vanity as has been rising of recent years in the wheat and cattle towns, extra-modern and sure of it down to the brass nameplate for the clerk on duty; nothing newer, handier, smarter, more superfluous, in Kansas City itself—and nobody in the least awed by it. Visitors go about with their eyebrows raised. Native personages, to show how modern they are, lounge about in their shirt sleeves, without collars, put their feet on the velvet upholstery and drop ashes and matches on the imitation oriental carpets.

Dreadwind came back to it by a side street, having missed the main thoroughfare by one block, and entered through a door that obviously gave into the hotel and yet had no sign or legend upon it. Inside was a narrow hall; and halfway down this hall was an opening with two swinging wicker doors, the use of which was to screen the interior. There was nothing over these doors or on them to indicate what might be taking place inside; but by certain familiar sounds Dreadwind very easily guessed. He pushed the doors open and saw what he expected. It was a spacious room filled with chairs in rows. Across one wall was a large blackboard on which a boy chalked up grain quotations received from a telegraph operator at a sounder to one side. At the left were some partitioned spaces, one with a door marked “Office,” one with a window marked “Orders” and one with a window marked “Cashier.” Over the blackboard in large gilt letters was a sign: “Anthony Jumper—Broker—Member Chicago Grain Exchange—Grain and Stocks.”

It was a bucket shop—a gambling place. The windows were all screened. More than twenty customers were present in the chairs, some of them farmers, some evidently important citizens of the community, including the local banker, all a little furtive and trying very consciously to conceal it. Dreadwind was beguiled. A leopard unawares in a fox’s den! Approaching the order window he asked:

“How much wheat may one trade in here?”

“All you want,” said the young man behind the window. He was high and weary about it.

“How much margin?”

“Cent a bushel,” said the young man, affecting to yawn.

Dreadwind wrote on an order pad: “Sell 200M May wheat,” and pushed it through the window together with two one-thousand-dollar bills.

The silly young order clerk had more vanity than common sense. He had never seen an order as large as that. He ought not to have taken it on his own responsibility. But having made a high spit he could not chew dust. All that he did with the shock of surprise, more than to swallow it, was to adjust his nose glasses with an anaemic gesture of slight personal discomfort.

“All right, sir,” he said.

Dreadwind sat down. May wheat was 90 cents on the blackboard. In less than two minutes a boy brought him a memorandum reading: “Sold 200M May wheat at 89?.”

He was astonished. The celerity with which the report was returned proved what he already knew. This was a bucket shop. His order had not actually been executed. This is to say, the wheat had not been sold by telegraph in the wheat pit at Chicago. There was only the pretense of this having been done. All that had happened was that a bet had been entered on the books of the concern—a bet between Anthony Jumper and an unknown client on the price of 200,000 bushels of wheat. But a bet of that size was rather large to be accepted with all coolness in a small-town bucket shop. And Dreadwind was curious to see what would come of it. The price of wheat began to fall. The next quotation made it 89
³
/
₄
, then 89?, then 89
¹
/
₂
.

Presently the wicker doors flew open and shut again. Mr. Jumper was back from lunch. He was a bald, brisk little man with an ingratiating manner plated upon a metallic surface. First he stopped in the office. A minute later he was with the young man behind the order window to see what business had been doing in his absence. Suddenly he burst forth in a great hurry, crossed the room toward the blackboard, spoke a word to the telegraph operator, and went directly back behind the order window. There he conversed in low tones with the young man, all the time regarding Dreadwind with a shrewd slanting look.

Anyone who knows a bucket shop will understand this pantomime. Jumper saw Dreadwind’s transaction in 200,000 bushels of wheat as the young man had entered it on the betting sheet. Then he saw on the blackboard that the price of wheat was falling. The unknown customer was winning. His first act was to tell the telegrapher to stop passing up prices—to sit on them until further notice. That would give him time to think. Having thus postponed disaster he went back behind the window to have a good look at Dreadwind and resolve a course of action. All of this Dreadwind was amusedly aware of; and he was not surprised when Jumper came and sat down beside him.

Jumper had decided to take his dilemma by the horns. His instinct was sound. He knew the kind of person Dreadwind was.

“This is no place for you,” he said quietly, in a confidential voice. “We can’t handle your business.”

“But you have it,” said Dreadwind, showing the memorandum on which it was written: “Sold 200M May wheat at 89?.” That was binding. With an uncontrollable impulse Jumper reached for the paper. Dreadwind gently drew it back.

“You’re a good sport,” said Jumper. “I can size a man up. And you’re an old hand at this game. I can see that with one eye. You don’t want to upset me, do you? This is just a little affair here. I’m only starting for myself. Took over a business I was working for.”

“What’s the matter with your wire service?” Dreadwind asked. “Your quotations have stopped.”

“Honest, now,” said Jumper, ignoring the question, “I can’t handle your business. The bank roll won’t stand it. You know how that is. That boy was all alone there when you came in. He didn’t know any better. He’s a nice boy. Got an old mother to look after. Now man to man—we understand each other—just man to man, let’s call it off.”

“I can read the telegraph instrument,” said Dreadwind. “I know what the price of wheat is. It’s 88
¹
/
₂
. I hear it. And the last price on the board is 89
¹
/
₂
.”

Jumper gave vent to a startled sinner’s oath. “You ain’t one of them ringers that goes around busting up little fellows like me? You ain’t, are you? No. You ain’t. I can see that.”

“If you don’t let those quotations go up on the board I’ll tell everybody what kind of game you are running,” said Dreadwind.

Jumper looked around the room with a desperate air, scanning the wide, wide ocean for a bit of friendly wreckage. Then he relaxed, puffing out his breath.

“I’m up the flue if you do,” he said. “Up, up. Gone! Busted! All right. Go ahead and see what you get. No, now listen. See here. You are a good sport all the same. I’m not wrong about a man like you. Let me slip you this two thousand and you tear up that piece of paper. Would you take advantage of me when there was only that idiot alone in the shop? And he with an old mother to think about?”

“Well, on one condition,” said Dreadwind. “I want you to tell me something.”

“I’ll tell you anything,” said Jumper. “Only first let’s get this off my mind.”