OH, MY JEAN!

WHEN JACK STEWART left Indiana, and left owing the two hundred dollars which was secured by a chattel mortgage on his horses, he failed to do something he now had cause to regret. The man to whom he owed this money agreed to give him one year in which to pay it, but didn't renew the mortgage. He was a close friend of Jack's, and there had been no worry. But the man died; his affairs fell into the hands of an administrator, whose duties were to clean up, to realize on all due and past due matter. And because the note of Jack Stewart's was due and past due, the extension being simply a verbal one, the administrator wrote Jack demanding that he take up his note at once.

We know the circumstances of Jack Stewart; that because Jean Baptiste had hired his son Bill, and now was boarding with them, he was able to get along; but Jack Stewart had nothing with which to pay $200 notes.... So while Jean Baptiste was recovering from his illness, Jack Stewart had cause to be very much worried.

Possessed, however, with a confidence, Jack took the matter up with the banker in the town where he received his mail. Now a common saying in a new country is: "I'm going to borrow five dollars and start a bank...." Inferring that while there is, as a whole, an abundance of banks in a new country, they do not always have the wherewithal to loan. What they have is usually retained for the accommodation of their regular patrons, and they were unable to accommodate Jack, even had they wished to do so.

Now, he could have secured the money had he been a claimholder or a land owner. But Jack, being neither, found himself in a bad plight. He had Aggie write a long letter in which he tried to explain matters, and requested until fall to pay, as had been verbally agreed upon. But the class of people in the old East who regard the new West as a land of impossibilities, where drought burns all planted crops to crisp, where grasshoppers eat what is left, who still regard those who would stake their fortunes and chances in the West as fools, were not all dead.

The administrator happened to be one of this kind. He had no confidence in the country Jack wrote about, the crops he had planted; what he expected to reap, and no patience withal into the bargain. So he wrote Jack a brief letter, and also one to the bank in the town, sending the papers with it at the same time, with instructions to foreclose at a given time. And when Jack knew more of it, he was confronted with paying the note in thirty days or having his horse taken, and sold at auction.

Jean Baptiste recovered, went back to his work, and noticed that Jack Stewart and Agnes were much worried; but, of course, didn't understand the cause of it.

"Have you tried elsewhere, father?" said Agnes when they had gotten the notice giving them thirty days' grace.

"But I am not known, dear. There is not much money in a new country, and it is very difficult to get credit where there is nothing to lend."

"There must be some way to avoid this. Oh, that man, why couldn't he be reasonable!"

"It is always bad when one has to write. If I were back in Indiana I could go and see this man and reason it out, but when a thousand miles is between us—it's bad!"

"If we could have only just three months."

"Two months," he exclaimed.

The days that followed were days of grave anxiety, of nervous anticipation for them. There was but one person they could turn to at such a time, and that was Jean Baptiste. Agnes thought of him, she started to speak with her father regarding him, but in the end did not bring herself to do so.

So the time went on, and the thirty days became twenty; and the twenty fell to ten; and the ten fell to five, and then Jean Baptiste could bear their worry no longer without speaking.

"You and your father have been very kind to me, Agnes, and I can see you are greatly worried about something. If I could help you in any way, I would be glad to do so."

She was so near to crying when she heard this that she had much difficulty keeping back the tears. But she managed to say:

"Why, it's nothing serious. Just a little matter, that's all," and she went into her room. He pondered. It was more than that. Of this he was sure. He left the house and came around to where Jack sat, and was moved by his expression. But Jack would say nothing. He could not understand. He tried to dismiss the subject from his mind, and so came Sunday, the day of days.

He was walking from his meal to his place to look over his crops, when from up the road he caught the sound of buggy-wheels. Two men, driving a single horse hitched to a light buggy were coming his way. When they caught sight of him, they hurried the animal forward slightly by touching him up with the whip, and beckoned to him to stop. Presently they drew up to where he stood and he recognized one as a homesteader, and having a claim near and the other as a professional dealer in horses. They exchanged greetings and some remarks about the weather and crops, and then the trader said:

"By the way, Jean, where does that old Scotchman live out this way? The old fellow who moved out here recently from Indiana?"

"That's the place there," and Baptiste pointed to the top of the house that could just be seen from where they stood.

"I see," said the other thoughtfully. "Wonder where that dappled gray mare he owns is grazing. I'd like to take a look at 'er."

"I think you will see her grazing in the pasture," said Baptiste curiously.

"How—what kind of animal is it?"

"Why, she's a hum-dinger," returned Baptiste more curiously. His curiosity aroused the other, who, looking at him said:

"Well, you see the old man is to be sold out—foreclosed, and I thought I'd take a look at his stuff and if I thought there was anything in it, I might save the old scout the humiliation by buying it."

"T' hell you say!" exclaimed Baptiste.

"Oh, yes. Hadn't you heard about it?"

"This is my first knowledge of it."

"Yes, the sheriff's coming to get the stuff Tuesday—that is, providing the old man don't come across with a couple of hundred before that time, and it is not likely he can, I don't think."

"Well, well!" Baptiste exclaimed, thinking of the worry he had observed in the faces of Agnes and her father, and at last beginning to understand.'

"Yes, it's rather bad, that. But this follows the old gent from where he comes, and he is not known here, so I guess I'll mosey along and take a look at the stuff—just a glance at it from the road, you understand. And if things look good, I'll drop by 'n see him later." Whereupon they went their way cheerfully, while Baptiste resumed his, thoughtfully.

He returned to his house by a roundabout way, and, later, hitching a team to a light buggy, he drove into the town where Jack traded and looked up the banker.

"Say, Brookings," he opened, "what kind of deal is the old Scotchman up against out there? You understand."

"Oh, yes!" exclaimed the cashier. "The old man out there on the Watson homestead! Well, it seems like the old fellow stands a good chance of being sold out." He then explained to Baptiste regarding the note and the circumstances.

"That don't look just right to me," muttered Baptiste when he had heard the circumstances.

"Well, now, it isn't right. But what can be done?"

"Can't you loan the old man the money?"

"I could; but I don't like letting credit to strangers and renters. If he could get a good man on his note I'd fix it out for him, since we've just received quite a sum for deposit."

"Well, if I should go it," said Baptiste suggestively. The other looked quickly up.

"Why, you! Gee, I'd take care of him for ten times the amount if you'd put your 'John Henry' on the note."

"Well, I'll be in town early in the morning," said Baptiste, turning to drive away.

"All right, Jean. Sure! I'll look for you."

The day was bright and lovely for driving, and Baptiste drove to his homestead, and from there to the Reynolds' where he had dinner and visited late. The next morning he went to the town, and when Jack Stewart, exhausted by the strain of worry under which he was laboring, came into town, having decided to try and sell the mare and one of the other horses, thereby leaving him only one with which to complete the cultivating of his corn and the reaping of his crops, he was called into the bank.

"Now if you'll just sign this, Mr. Stewart," said Brookings, "you can have until December first on that stuff."

"You mean the note!" the old man exclaimed, afraid to believe that he had heard aright.

"Yes, the note that is about to be foreclosed. You've been granted an extension." Jack Stewart was too overcome to attempt to comment. The realization that he was to be allowed to go on and not be sold out or be forced to dispose of his little stock at such a critical time, was too much for words. He caught up the pen, steadied his nerves, and wrote his name, not observing that the banker held a blotter over the lower line of the note. Jean Baptiste had cautioned him to do this. In view of the circumstances he had not wished Stewart or Agnes to know that he had gone on the note.

Jack Stewart hurried home in a fever of excitement. He could not get there fast enough. He thought of Agnes, he did not wish her to have a minute more grief than what she had endured. He reached home and stumbled into the house, and to Agnes he said:

"Oh, girl, girl, girl! They have extended the note! The sheriff is not coming! We are saved, saved, saved!" He was too overcome with emotion and joy then to proceed. He sank into a chair, while Agnes, carried away with excitement over the news, caressed him; said words of love and care until both had been exhausted by their own emotions. When they at last became calm, she turned to her father who now walked the floor in great joy.

"How did they come to extend the note, father?"

"Why—why, dear, that had never occurred to me! I became so excited when they told me that I had been granted an extension, I can only recall that I signed the note and almost ran out of the bank. The man had to call me back to give me my old note and mortgage. I don't know why they granted the extension." He stood holding his chin now and looking down at the floor as if trying to understand after all how it happened. Then his eyes opened suddenly wide. "Why, and, do you know, now, since I come to think of it, they did not take a new mortgage on the stock."

"I don't believe that the administrator had anything to do with it," she said after a time. "I know that man. He would sell his mother out into the streets. Now I wonder who has influenced the bank into giving us this time...."

"Bless me, dear lord. But right now I am too tickled to try to think who. To be saved is enough all at once. Later, I shall try to figure out who has been my benefactor." And with this he left the house and went to walk with his joy in the fields where George was plowing corn, unconscious of the fact that the team he was driving was to have been seized on the morrow and sold for debt.

"Now I wonder who saved papa," Agnes said to herself, taking a seat by the window and gazing abstractedly out into the road. She employed her wits to estimate what had brought it about, and as she sat there, Jean Baptiste came driving down the road. He had not been there since breakfast the morning before. He had taken his morning's meal at the restaurant in the town. As he drove down the slope that began above the house wherein she sat, his dark face was lighted with a peaceful smile. He drove leisurely along, concerned with the bright prospects of his four hundred acres of crop. He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he passed on by without seeing Agnes at the window; without even looking toward the house.

Upon seeing him Agnes had for the moment forgotten what she was thinking about. But when he had passed by, she was suddenly struck with an inspiration. She jumped quickly to her feet: She raised her hands to her breast and held them there as if to still a great excitement, as she cried:

"Jean! Jean, Jean Baptiste! It was you, you, who did it. It was you who saved my father, saved me; saved us all! Oh, my Jean!"

She was overcome then with a great emotion. She sank slowly upon a chair. And as she did so sobs broke from her lips and she wept long and silently.