A Captain in the Ranks Part 7

One morning when he entered the office Captain Hallam gave him several business letters to answer from memoranda scribbled upon them by clerks or others. He gave him also a memorandum in his own handwriting, saying:

"Cut that down if you can and make a telegram of it. I'll be back in half an hour or so. Have it ready for me."

The case was this: A huge steamboat lay at the levee, loaded almost to the water's edge with grain which Captain Hallam was more than anxious to hurry to New Orleans to meet a sudden temporary and very marked advance in that market. That morning the boat had been "tied up"--as the phrase went--that is to say, she had been legally attached for debt, at the suit of a firm in St. Louis. Until the attachment should be removed the boat must lie at Cairo, in charge of a sheriff's officer. Captain Hallam wished to secure her immediate release, and to that end he purposed sending the telegram.

When he returned to the office Duncan handed him for inspection and signature the letters he had written.

"Here is the telegram, also," he said, "but, if you will pardon the impertinence, I think you had better not send it--at least in the form you have given it."

"What's the matter?" quickly snapped Hallam.

"It binds you to more than I think you intend."

"Go on! Explain!"

"Why, I cannot help seeing that if you send this dispatch you will make yourself legally responsible, not only for the claim for which the boat is now attached, but also for every claim against her that may exist anywhere. There may be none such, or there may be many. In any case I do not think you intend to a.s.sume them all."

"Go on! The boat must be got away. What do you advise?"

"That you go on her bond for this claim--which seems to me so clearly illegal that I think you can never be held upon the bond--and----"

"Remind me, when this is over, that you are to come to my house to-night for consultation on that point. Now go on."

"Well, by going on her bond for this claim, instead of asking the creditors to release the boat on your promise as made in the telegram, you can secure her immediate release, making yourself liable, at worst, for no more than the six hundred dollars claimed."

"But if I do that, what is to prevent another tie-up at Memphis and another at Vicksburg and others wherever the boat may happen to land.

She's in debt up to the top of her smokestacks, all along the river."

"As you own the cargo, and she can't carry another ton, why should you let her stop at all? I suppose the captain would do as you desire in that matter. You might request him to run through without any landings."

"Request be hanged. I'll tell him what to do and he'll do it. He knows where cargoes come from. Can you get the papers ready?"

"I can, sir."

"All right. Do it at once." Then turning to a s.h.i.+pping clerk he sent for the captain of the steamer, to whom he said:

"Get up steam at once. You are to leave in less than an hour. How much coal have you?"

The captain told him.

"Take two light barges of coal in tow, one on each side, and draw on them for fuel. When they're empty cast them loose with two men on each to land them. You can pick them up on your return trip. You are to steam to New Orleans without a landing anywhere. You understand?"

The captain understood. By this time the papers were ready and after half an hour spent in legal formalities the released steamboat cast loose from the wharf and backed out into the river.

Then Captain Hallam turned to Guilford Duncan and said:

"I've an idea that you'll do. If you like I'll put you at regular work at a monthly salary, and we'll see how we get on together."

"I should like that."

"Very well. Now, where are you boarding?"

"Nowhere. I get what I want to eat at the booths down along the levee."

"But where do you sleep?"

"Among the big lumber piles down there on Fourth street."

Captain Hallam looked at the young man for a moment with something like admiration in his eyes. Presently he said:

"You'll do. You've got grit and you'll 'make the riffle,' sure. But you must live more regularly, now that you are to have a salary. I know what it means to live as you've been doing. I used to do it myself. I could tell to a cent the nutritive value of a pegged pie or a sewed one, and at a single glance I could guess the probable proportions of the dog and cat in a sausage. That sort of thing's all right for a little while, but not for long, and as for the sleeping among lumber piles, it's risky. I used to sleep in an empty sugar hogshead by preference, but sleeping out of doors may give you rheumatism."

"I've been doing it for four years," answered Duncan, smiling, "and I still have the use of my limbs."

"Yes, of course. I didn't think of that. But you must live better now.

There's a well-furnished room above the office. It was my brother's quarters before he got married, and it is very comfortable. You can take it for your own. Give Dutch John, the scrub boy, half a dollar a week to take care of it for you and that's all the rent you need pay. As for your meals, most young men in Cairo feed their faces at the hotel. But that's expensive and what the proprietor calls his 'kuzene' is distinctly bad. There's a lady, however,--Mrs. Deming,--who furnishes very good 'square meals,' I hear, over in Walnut street. You'd better try there, I think. She's what you would call a gentlewoman, but she needs all the money you'll pay her."

Duncan wondered a little what a 'square meal' might be, but he was getting somewhat used to the prevalence in the West of those figurative forms of expression which we call slang. So he took it for granted that "square meals" were for some reason preferable to meals of any other geometrical form, and answered simply that he would look up Mrs.

Deming's house after business hours should be over.

"Remember," said Captain Hallam as he pa.s.sed out of the office, "you are to see me at my house to-night. Better come to supper--say at seven--and after supper we'll talk over that law point you mentioned, and other things."

Duncan wondered a little that Captain Hallam should give him so intimate an invitation when he knew so little of him. Everybody else in the office understood. Captain Will was planning to "size up his man" still further, in an evening's conversation.

IX

ONE NIGHT'S WORK

As the weeks and months went on the results of Guilford Duncan's work completely justified the confident a.s.sertion he had made to Captain Hallam that _a capable man can learn anything if he really wants to_.

He rapidly familiarized himself with the technicalities, as well as with the methods and broad principles of business. He sat up till midnight for many nights in succession, in order to learn from the head bookkeeper the rather scant mysteries of bookkeeping. By observing the gaugers who measured coal barges to determine their contents, he quickly acquired skill in doing that.

It was so with everything. He was determined to master every art and mystery that in anywise pertained to business, whether the skill in question was or was not one that he was ever likely to need or to practice.

His diligence, his conscientiousness in work, his readiness of resource, his alert intelligence, and his st.u.r.dy integrity daily commended him more and more to the head of the firm, and not many months had pa.s.sed before everyone in the office tacitly recognized the young Virginian as the confidential adviser and a.s.sistant of Captain Hallam himself, though no formal appointment of that kind had been made.

But no advance of salary came to the young man as a result. It was one of Captain Hallam's rules never to pay a man more for his services than he must, and never to advance a man's salary until the advance was asked for.

Captain Hallam was in no fibre of his being a miser, but he acted always upon those cold-blooded prudential principles that had brought him wealth. It was not money that this great captain of commerce wors.h.i.+ped, but success. Success was the one G.o.d of his idolatry. Outside of his business he was liberal in the extreme. Even in his business operations he never hesitated at lavish expenditure where such expenditure promised good results. But he regarded all unnecessary spending as waste, of the kind that imperils success.

In his cynical moments, indeed, he sometimes said that "if you have a valuable man in your employ, you must keep him poor; otherwise you'll lose him." But in so saying he perhaps did himself an injustice. He was apt to feign a heartless selfishness that he did not feel.

Little by little Guilford Duncan had learned all this as he had learned business methods. He had at first modestly proposed to himself nothing more in the way of achievement than to make himself a valuable subordinate--a private, or at most a corporal or a sergeant--in the ranks of the great army of work. But before many months had pa.s.sed his modesty was compelled to yield somewhat to an increasingly clear understanding of conditions and possibilities. Somewhat to his own surprise he began to suspect himself of possessing capacities superior to those of the men about him, and even superior to those of many men who had risen to high place in commerce and finance.

As Captain Hallam came more and more to rely upon the sagacity and character of this his most trusted man, he more and more brought young Duncan into those confidential conferences with the leading men of affairs, which were frequently necessary in the planning and execution of important enterprises, or in the meeting of difficulties and obstacles. In that way Duncan was brought into personal contact with the recognized masters--big and little--with railroad presidents, financiers, bankers, capitalists, and other men whose positions were in a greater or less degree commanding.