We-all Prairie. Once a great waggon, piled high with cotton, creaked by; once a burnt-skinned boy, hard as a nut, shrieking with an irrepressible sense of being alive, loped past on a mustang. Once a small, old man, in mean clothes and with a fine bearing, crossed the Square, cracking his whip nervously, his spur clicking on his boot as he walked. Once a large florid man and a tall girl came down the street and entered the door of a two-story brick building next the Grange. The man had an expansive, blustering way. The girl looked as though she were accustomed to admire the man and to badger him; her face was turned up to his adoringly, while her fun-hunting eyes, just sheathed under her lids, gleamed gaily. The building had a plate-glass window across the front of it, and on the window, in gold letters bordered in black, two legends were flung to the public:
BANK OF CANAAN
Crittenton Madeira
When the man and the girl had gone into the Bank of Canaan, the group at the Grange stopped gambling on the incoming teams and talked less drowsily.
"Looks like that girl gets purdier and purdier."
"Mighty pleasant ways she keeps. Never gone back on her raisin'. Never got too good for Mizzourah."
"As far as I go, I like her ways better'n her pappy's ways."
"Crit is a little toploftical."
"They mighty fond of each other, though. Seems like she's not in a hurry to marry and leave her pappy."
"Wall naow, I shouldn't be s'prised ef Miss Sally never did git married, talkin' abaout marryin'. 'Twould not s'prise me a-tall, 'twouldn't." Mr. Quin Beasley was talking. Mr. Beasley was the keeper of the Grange store and admittedly a man of fine conversational powers. His jaws worked on and he seemed able to get nutriment out of his ruminations long after a cow would have gone back to grass hungrily. "Aint sayin' I never am s'prised, becuz am, but do say that that wouldn't s'prise me, an' no more would it." Mr. Beasley brought his jaws in from their loose meanderings just as the clatter of a horse's hoofs became audible down the side street that, a little way along, became the road to Poetical.
"Name the comer, Beasley. Up to the sugar-tree about now. Name-er, name-er!" The challenger took from his pocket a huge horn knife, covered it with his hand and shook it in the face of Mr. Beasley, who responsively got his hand into his pocket and drew forth a knife, which he held covered after the manner of his opponent.
"Unsight, unseen," said Mr. Beasley. "It's Price Mason's pony."
The challenger chuckled deprecatingly over the carelessness of judgment evinced: "Price Mason's pony comes down with a hippety-hop," he remarked pityingly—"lemme listen—it's—no, taint, aint favorin' his right front foot—it's—wy!" the challenger suddenly twisted his head to one side and held it there like a lean-crawed chicken deciding where to peck. Simultaneously the other men glanced down the side street where it came into the Square, and when someone said, or whistled, "Wy, who the h-e-double-l is it?" everybody was waiting for an answer.
They had not long to wait. The horseman in question galloped straight toward the group and drew rein in front of them only a few minutes later. He was a big fellow, broad and lithe of shoulder and chest, and young and alert of face.
"Gentlemen," he called from his horse's back, "I want to find Mr. Crittenton Madeira. Ah!" he laughed, a deep, rich note, as he saw the gold and black sign, "gentlemen, I have found Mr. Madeira!" He leaped from his horse and began to tether him to a staple, set in the pavement in front of the Grange.
"Yes," replied a member of the Grange group, all of whom rose sociably, "Crit and Miss Sally,"—the young man laughed again, softly, as though he could not help it—"Crit and Miss Sally jes went into the bank; I don't reckin they've come out again."
"Miss Sally's come out again," interposed another Granger, "because I seen her."
"It's the father that I want to see," said the horseman, with smiling emphasis, "not the daughter, not Miss Sally." He passed through the bank door, still smiling, and the Grange group looked at each other, rife with speculation on the instant.
"Hadn't-a said not, I'd-a said it wuz Miss Sally he wanted to see. Looks to me like he might be one of her beaux. Wears sumpin the same clothes."
"Looked like a Yank to me."
"Uh-huh, betchew he lets his biscuits cool before he butters 'em."
"Haven't heard Crit say he was looking for a stranger."
"Reckon if you keep up with Crit's business, my friend, you'll have to walk faster."
While the Grangers were wondering, supposing, reckoning, the man who probably let his biscuits cool before he buttered them entered the Bank of Canaan.
When the cage for the clerical force had been put into the Bank of Canaan, there was not a great deal of the bank left, so the man stopped where he thought he was least apt to be scraped, in the little space in front of the Force's window. The Force put his pen behind his ear, and, without waiting for inquiry or request, called off to the rear of the room.
"Mist' Madeira! He's here! Can he come on in? If you'll go right down there"—went on the Force—"to that door in front of you, you can go through it."
The thing seemed feasible, as the door was half open, so the visitor attempted it. As he reached the door, however, his way was temporarily blocked by a big red-faced man who held out both hands to him and took possession of him with violent cordiality.
"God bless my soul! Howdy, howdy, howdy!" cried the big man. "Been looking for you for a week. Only last night I told Sally that I wasn't going to look for you any longer. Just eternally gave you up. How in the Sam Hill have you taken so long to get here? Come on in and have a seat."
As he talked, the Missourian led his guest inside a small private office, handed him to a chair and stood up before him, big, colossal, dominating the younger man, or at least meaning to.
"I am very rapidly concluding that you are Mr. Madeira, and that you know that I am Steering," smiled the visitor, sinking into a chair adaptably, though he realised that, for two men who had never seen each other before, the meeting had been unusual. He also realised that, off somewhere in the sphere of imponderable influences, the effect when his hand clasped the big man's hand had been exactly that of the clashing of two swords.
"Oh, God love you, there's no black magic about my knowing you for Steering—only stranger that's been expected in Canaan for six weeks!" cried Madeira, "and as for your guessing that I'm Madeira, you don't deserve a bit of credit for it. My sign's out." His manner conveyed that his sign was quite as much his personality as the black and gold letters on the window. "Yes, I'm Madeira, and you are Steering, and we both might as well own up to it. And now what's kept you so long on the road? How'd you manage to put in a whole week between here and Springfield?" Madeira seated himself in a swivel chair in front of his desk and eyed his visitor with that aggressive geniality, that tremendous sense of himself, warm and vivid in his face and manner. And, as in the moment when he had faced Missouri from the top of the Tigmore Hills, Steering had a feeling that he was being claimed, absorbed.
"Why, the explanation is of the simplest. At the very last minute, there at Springfield, too late to get a word of advice out to you, I fell in with some fellows who were going to ride across country toward the Canaan Tigmores, and I joined them. They gave out at Bessietown, but I've come every foot of the way over the Ridge on horseback, and alone at that. I wanted to see Missouri, get acquainted with the home of my ancestors,
