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SATAN'S BUSHEL



B Y T H E S A M E A U T H O R

T H E D R I V E R

"I feel as did Mark Sullivan, who said:'Garet Garrett has written one of the greatnovels of the day.' . . . Tha t is beside th epoint to one who wants to study man and hiswo rks. . . . Th e thing that impresses m e isits fidelity to life."—BERNARD M . BARUCH.

T H E C I N D E R B U G G YA FABLE IN IRON AND STEEL

"A startlingly fresh book."—Philadelphia Public Ledger.

"A real achievement in telling a story ofAmerica's meteoric industrial rise."

The Literary Review.

E. P . DUTTON & COMPANY



SATAN'S BUSHEL

BY

GARET GARRETT

AUTHOR OF **THB DRIYBR/ ' "THE CINDER BUSBY/* K C .

NEW YORK

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

681 FIFT H AVENU E



Copyright, 1924

By E. P. Dutton & Company

All Rights Reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED

STATES OF AMERICA



SATAN'S BUSHEL

C H A P T E R I

1X7*HY they asked me to their grayish feast they

* * perhaps did not know themselves. I was a writ-ing person who happened to know their language.They were men of the market place, pillars thereof,

with much in common and nothing in friendship. Ihad been surprised to see them together until I remem-bered the news that was running in big headlines allover the country.

What inclined them suddenly to one another was thecentripetal force of a harrowing experience. They hadjust appeared at Washington before a Committee ofCongress to bear witness for that honorable system ofuse and sorceries that is founded on gambling in wheat— and the mule of public opinion had kicked them inthe face. Th ey never saw the mule. They had only

felt it. Also they were aware of seeming ridiculous.And having come with one impulse to the seashore tolet the thing blow over, they were beginning to be sobored with themselves that when one of them spoke ofwhat they all were thinking the other three silentlygroaned.

"W ha t did anybody say that wasn't so ?" M oberly

demanded to know, evidently for the ninety-ninth time.1



2 SATAN'S BU SHE L

*'Nothing,1' said Goran, with weary inattention."Nothing," he added, gently fingering his little beard.

Goran was a corporation lawyer who specialized inBoard of T ra de practice. H is business was to keep"wheat gambling free and legal, within the letter of thelaw. H e was supposed also to know the ways of themule.

"Then what's all the damn fuss about?" Moberlycontinued. "W hy do the newspapers do th is? "

He was addressing himself to me, obliquely, as hismanner was, and I did not answer. The reason wasth at I did not hear him, not consciously, although after-ward I remembered what he said; for the moment Iwas absent. There had occurred to me that instantan astonishing probability. I had the premonition th atsomething unreal was about to come true.

"You, I'm asking," said M oberly, in a tone to wakenme. "Y ou 're in that line of business. W hy do thenewspapers always put us in wrong? Or don't theyknow any better?"

" I beg your pa rdon ," I said. " I wasn't listening.I was thinking of a tree."

"A tree!" he said.

"An inhabited tre e," I said. "D id you know a treemight be inhabited? N either did I. I do n't know itye t for sure. N or do I know any better. Th is tree Iam thinking of is at the other side of the world. I thas a root that reaches all the way through to theChicago wheat pit."

H e disliked to be mystified. So he turned away with

a gesture of irritation and went on talking. The others



SATAN'S BUSHEL 3

were perfectly stolid, thinking perhaps, as he thought,that I had proposed an enigma with intent to turn it

against them.T hat was not the case. N ot only was I thinking of

a certain tree—a monstrous, haunted vegetable thatlived at the edge of an Asian forest and had enslavedtwo fascinated human beings; I seemed actually to seeit again. If I closed my eyes, there it was, like anobject imagined in a crystal. T hat the image asso-

ciated itself in my mind with the practice of gamblingin wheat was a natural fact, requiring only to be ex-plained. That a tree in Asia had, as I said, a livingroot in the Chicago wheat pit, was a romantic fact, notto be taken literally. But what had suddenly occurredto me was altogether strange.

This was nothing less than the probability that

months before, almost in the shadow of the tree, thepresent moment with all its accidental conjunctionshad been foretold. T he circumstances were vivid inmemory. The woman had drawn me a little aside.She stood with her hands behind her, looking away.The sun was in her face, yet her eyes were wide open,and her voice was that of one asleep. "I n a far place/*

she said, "by the water, you will be alone among manypeople. . . . Four men will meet you there . . . asif by chance. . . . They will take you to sup withthem. . . . Tell them everything and tell no one elseuntil then. . . . Only be sure they are the right men.. . . You will think of a sign. Any sign will do ."

I was a solitary person who traveled a great deal

and had made many acquaintances in the world. T hus



$ SATAN'S BU SHE L

the conditions were easily fulfilled. There are manyplaces by the water where one may be unexpectedly

picked up for dinner; and four is not an eerie number.And yet, nothing of that kind had happened to me since— n ot until this evening. A nd beyond the fact that ofall the men I knew these four were about the last Ishould have thought it likely to meet by chance in onegroup, there was also this singular coincidence—thatthey were all bound to feel a lively interest in the sub-

ject. She had said I would think of a sign and that anysign wo uld do. I had already invented one. M obc rlywou ld never ask. T hat was certain. H e would soonersweat with curiosity than call the answer to a riddle.One of the others might, especially Goran; and if onedid—no, but if Goran did, if he and no other shouldsay, "What about your tree?"—I would take that sis

a sign— I who had never believed in signs. Thu s Ileft it on the knees of superstition, knowing what I didand how silly it was, yet with the feeling that by suchdevice I gave the event its freedom and put the conse-quences beyond me.

Dinner was served on a private balcony overhangingthe surf. There was no expectation of pleasure in it.

M obe rly and Goran sat together. N ex t was Selkirk,a moody and very lucky young speculator, who inces-santly smoked cigarettes through a long shell holderwith a kind of Oriental calm and seemed never to seethe surface of anything. T he fourth was Sylvester, aplumb, tan-fisted man, grain merchant and broker, whorepresented the Board of Trade in an official way.

Their voice* one at a time starting and stopping



SATAN'S BU SH EL 5

abruptly left holes of silence in the air . Then othersounds rushed in. One heard again the toothless mum-

bling of the sea, the brass of a distant band, squeals,cries, laughter, ballyhoo voices, the dying merry-go-round, all the tinkle and patter of life pursuing itsaimless recreations up and down the boardwalk.

W hat they said did not interest me. I listened dis-tantly. They touched without moving it, almost with-out knowing they had touched it, the ageless, endless,

economic reptile that has now so many names it cannotalways remember what guise it presents to view. Yetit is never anything but the simple fact that men cannottrust themselves to divide up one another's things.This of course has been true from immemorial time.Only now, with society so constituted that division inminute complexity is vital, since no one any longer may

exist by his own goods and efforts alone, the conse-quences are cross-shaped and oppressive.

The theory underlying their discourse, not formu-lated, yet clearly implied, was that people live by sus-picious, predatory groups in a series of jungles, eachgroup taking toll of the other according to the other'snecessities by a natural law of strife.

And all the time I was thinking of a law less com-pounded than that— the law of a man who ha th takena woman.

M oberly did most of the talking. H e made onethink of a grain elevator— a stark sudden shape, twotiny windows very high up, a door with no steps orthreshold, all dark inside, everything glazed with a

fine, clean dust. In speaking he made the same monot-



6 SATAN'S BUSHEL

onous sound a grain elevator makes when it is notmysteriously still.

The thing he resembled, that precisely he was—amechanism of dreadful simplicity for manipulatinggra in. A third more or less of the entire Americanwheat crop passed annually through his hands. H ebought it and sold it for gain. The gain was not his.All the dividend of his work belonged to the DearbornGrain Corporation, which was an institution existing

by virtue of unlimited bank credit. I t had a nervoussystem ramified through the whole bread-eating world.M oberly was its head . All its functions were his. H ewore the title of president. Its body was owned byanonymous capital. H e did not care. H e served hiscorporate Ph araoh fanatically. From a runner on theBoard of Trade he had come up slowly, irresistibly,

until now in his own aspect he was greater than thepower of money he represented. Hav ing discoveredthe principle whereby capital, if you have enough of it,overcomes the odds of chance, and with an unlimitedamount of credit supporting him, he had reduced theChicago Board of Trade to the status of a privateprincipality, like that of Monaco, where everyone

gambles but the prince of gamblers, who takes the per-centage. Able at any time to buy or sell all the visiblegrain, he terrified other speculators and so laid thegame of speculation itself under tribute to his machine.He made and unmade corners; for months at a timehe carried the wheat pit in his pocket. H is immunity,so far at least, from all those forms of fixed delusion

that bewitch and ruin great speculators was owing to



SATAN'S BU SH EL 7

the fact that he was not a speculator. Never had heany personal interest in gains and losses.

This was the state of mystery into which a com-mittee of Congress had been making hostile inquiry.M oberly was a tough-minded witness. H e believed incorners, in speculation, in gambling unrestrained. H isconvictions included the law of the jungle, raw andunequivocal. H e did not announce it. But when it wassuggested to him as a theory of conduct by the keeper

of the invisible mule, namely, the chairman of the com-mittee, he seized upon it, expanded it, applied it,proved it with brutal logic—and proved at the sametime that he had never had a social idea in his life.

And here he sat, full of amazed soreness, two brightred patches burning on his cheek bones, his roaringpouches distended, expounding it all over again— tohimself. Nobody was attending to what he said untilof a sudden he broke into new ground.

"And all the time I was loaded," he said. "Loadedwith nitroglycerin. Enough to blow their quill feathersoff. They knew it. Two members of that committeeknew it, and knew that I knew they knew it. Yet theysat there looking at me like owls pretending to beeagles. I might have been a sack of wheat for all thecare they had. And I was loaded. Talk about gam-bling! I'd hate to take such chances. A man mightexplode accidentally.'1

"W hat was the nitroglycerin?" Selkirk asked. H ismanner was coolly disbelieving. Moberly eyed him

aslant and went on:"I 'm going to tell you. W ha t were they so hot to



8 SATAN'S BU SH EL

pro ve? W hat was it? Tha t speculation affects theprice of wheat one way or another to everybody's hurt.

If the price goes up the loaf is pinched. If the pricegoes down the farm er's ruined. But the re 's somethingelse in the price of wheat. T ha t' s politics. And theynever speak of it. That's what they're all interestedin. Politics."

"I don't see any nitro yet," said Selkirk, with thesame air as before.

"No, I know you do n't," said M oberly. " It 's rightthere. It 's in what I know about politicians. Lastspring my directors came to me and said we had tohave more general prosperity in the country. Youknow who my directors are . N o secret about th at .Men of affairs in all directions: railroads, banks, man-ufacturing, and so on. They said we had to have more

prosperity. The quickest way to get it was to putgrain prices up . C ouldn't I see my way clear to doth at? If I could they would stand under with all thecredit I needed. I said I'd see, and I did sec. W henconditions were right I began to buy grain— all therewas. Wheat was around eighty cents when we started.First, I told two members of the Cabinet at Washing-

ton what we were going to do, and "" Wh y ?" Selkirk asked.Moberly hesitated, was about to answer, then gave

him a glance of disgust and went on:" and they were pleased of course, because that

would keep the farmer quiet. Anyway, they hoped itwould. They told the Adm inistration, and everybody

was pleased. Prosperity is what keeps a political pa rty



SATAN'S BU SHE L 9

in office. Then certain members of C ongress, amongthem the two I speak of on the committee—they got

hold of it. T ha t was all right. As party managersthey were entitled to know. I didn't care. The moreof that the better. I didn't expect them to go and diga grave to bury their information in. They were freeto use it if they knew how. If they happened to buy alittle wheat, so much to the good. Every little helps.W ell, you know what followed. W e put wheat to a

dollar twenty-five a bushel, and the effect, as my direc-tors had calculated, was to stimulate business all overthe place. In one way we were disappointed. Fo rty-five cents a bushel added to the price of wheat didn'tkeep the farmer still. H e was stirred up by a crowdof politicians out of office, telling him that if specula-tion was abolished he could weigh his wheat in gold.

!And to meet this what does the other crowd—thecrowd that's in office— what does it do? I t gets usdown there before that committee and puts the goatsign on us. W e have to wear it. W e can't say adamned thing. W e are wicked speculators. W e haveonly one virtue and tha t's a secret. W e won 't spillwhat we know. H u h !"

"Were you in danger of ornamenting your testimonywith a statement like that?" asked Selkirk ironically.

uWhat would newspaper editors have done withtha t?" asked Moberly, ignoring Selkirk and lookingat me.

"They certainly would not have missed the moral,"I answered.

"Which is w ha t?"



10 SATAN'S BU SH EL

"That the power of such an organization as yours tomake prosperity and bless a political party by advanc-

ing the price of wheat is also the power to unmakeprosperity and break an administration by depressingthe price."

"But we would never do that," he said."People would be less interested in your intentions

than in your power," I said."Then you don't believe in speculation?"

"I didn 't say that ," I replied. "You asked me thequestion how public opinion would act on what you'vebeen saying. I t might have raised their quill feathersoff, but there wouldn't have been enough left of yourinstitution to wear a feather on."

He was the only one of the four who had no flexi-bility of mind, no glimpse of self-seeing, no pleasantry

in disagreement. I t was not for that I disliked him. Iknew no reason why I should dislike him, yet all themore I did. Our chemistries were antagonistic. Mylast rejoinder froze him solid. I t was more adversereally than I had wished it to be. A silence fell uponus and I was thinking how to restore the broken con-versation when Goran spoke, saying, "Let's change the

subject. W hat about your tree ?"There was the sign; and I was startled by its clarity." It 's a long story," I said. "M oreover, it's the

same subject still.""I remember you said it had its roots in the wheat

pit—the tree," said Goran, "whatever that means.But tell us ."

"It concerns Dreadwind," I said.



SATAN'S BU SH EL 11

The name as I pronounced it produced an electricaleffect in all four of them, each reacting as his nature

was. Selkirk, in the act of gently tapping his cigaretteholder over the ash tray, became perfectly still, withhis third finger raised, regard ing me fixedly. Sylvesterstraightened his spine and made a slight sound in histhroat. I noticed him particularly. Moberly did notvisibly sti r; his chair creaked. Goran turned halfaround in his chair, rested his elbow on the back of it

and propped his head on his fist, keeping his eyes onme.

"C oncerns him now? In the present tim e?" heasked. "H av e you seen him ?"

"And Absalom Weaver, too," I said."But Weaver's dead," said Goran."T hat may be. I t is as one thinks. I have seen his

shadow.""Anyone else?" asked Gora.i."Yes. The woman.""Who is that?""Weaver's daughter.""One romance more on this barren earth!" said

Goran , glistening. "T el l it simply."

You to whom now I am telling the story would per-haps never have heard of Dreadwind. You would notknow what there was about him to make four suchminds become taut with interest at the sound of hisnam e. H e was a speculator, a wooer of chance, com-monly to say a gambler, who shook the sills of thewheat pit and then suddenly disappeared. T ha t wouldbe nothing strange by itself. Many speculators do



12 SATAN'S BU SHEL

suddenly vanish from view. I t is the rule. Generallythey leave some memento, be it only a record in the

bankruptcy court or an inexpensive mortuary emblem.Dreadwind left not so much as the print of his foot inthe dust of La Salle Street. Still, even that is no tunheard of altogether. W hat made his case uniquewas tha t he jilted his star. Surely that never happenedin the world before. And such a star!— whimsical,tantalizing, never twice in the same aspect, running allover the heavens, yet true, always true to Dreadwind,N o other man could have followed it. H e understoodit, adored it, obeyed it blindly, and was called eccentric.The word was wrong. I t defines an orbit. H e had noorbit. H is movements were unpredictable. And infull career he quit. Or whether he quit or not, heceased, dissolved, became utterly extinct.

As he ended, so he began—with no explanationswhatever. N ot that he purposely created any mysteryabout himself; but he was a silent, solitary, uncom-municative person, who in all possible ways said it withmoney and disappointed personal curiosity. I t per-haps never occurred to him to tell how or whence hecame. One day he appeared. T h a t was in W allStreet. H is introduction to his broker was money. H e

had no othe r; knew not how to get one, he said. Thebroker could take it or leave it, as he pleased. H e saidhe should probably trade a great deal and wanted fastservice in the execution of his orders.

Well, it isn't every day that a golden goose falls outof the sky into a stockbroker's lap; and when it hap-pens the miracle shall not be stared in the mouth. This



SATAN'S BUSHEL 13

stranger, giving no account of himself, was seen at onceto be more than a cool and practiced votary. H e was

ra re . H is operations were so large , so audacious andso unexpected that after a little while the broker foundhimself in a serious dilemma. Tru e, his till was over-flowing with commissions. T hat was all very well.But the fathers of the stock market had summoned himto kneel on the carpet and hear out of the book ofrules that paragraph which forbids unsafe trading.

Then they warned him that unless he controlled thegambling cyclone that dwelt in his office he should bedeemed guilty of conduct prejudicial to the welfare ofthe Stock Exchange and expelled therefrom.

Very gently, very ruefully, the broker brought thisdifficulty to the notice of his client. Dreadw ind wasnot angry. H e had rather the look of a man whose

feelings are hurt."Limits!" he said to himself. "Limits, limits. I s

there no game in the world without a limit?""One," said the broker."What is i t?""Wheat ."Dreadwind stood still, struck with an idea.

"I 've never gambled in whea t," he said. " I neverthought of it."

There was a grain ticker in the office. H e walkedover to it, gazed at it thoughtfully, ran some of thetape through his fingers.

"T his isn't like the stock ticker," he said. " I don'tremember ever to have looked at a grain ticker before.

On the stock ticker the amounts bought and sold are



14 SATAN'S BU SH EL

printed along with the prices. H er e are prices only.No amounts."

"T h at 's all," said the broker. "T he prices only.Amounts are not recorded.""You mean there is no record of the amount of

wheat bought and sold in speculation ?""That's correct.""How much wheat could I buy or sell this minute?"

Dreadwind asked, his eye still upon the grain ticker.

"Any amount.""A million bushels?""T en million, fifty million. Any amount.""And all that would show here on the tape would

be the price ?""Yes," said the broker."T ha nk s," said Dreadwind. "I t's two-thirty. Bal-

ance my account, please, and give me the credit incash.""What are you going to do?" the broker asked."Going to the wheat pit," said Dreadw ind. H e

added , "I 'll have to see. I don 't believe it.""You knew him as well as anyone here," I said to

M oberly. "H e must have crossed you often in the

wheat pit. W hat did you make of him ?""H e was ten feet high," said M oberly. "T he only

man I was ever afraid of—in the pit, I mean to say."That was handsome from Moberly, for, as we all

knew, Dreadwind had several times upset him in theopen market place. H e had been the only man whodared single handed to engage Moberly in a wheat-pit

con test; and M oberly without his backing of organ ized



SATAN'S BU SH EL 15

bank credit—Moberly, that is to say, on his own twolegs, would have been no match for this invader whoknew no rules, no limits and followed a zigzag star.

"I did not know him," I said, beginning the story."N o t until afterward, as I shall tell you. I had neverseen him, had in fact no idea of his personality. There-fore, what arrested my attention at sight, besides cer-tain singularities of circumstance, was the personalityitself, with no suggestion of its identity— I mean, no

suggestion that he was the missing Dreadw ind. Allthe time you must keep in mind the kind of man he was— I should say is. No rule of probability contains him.To say that he acts upon impulse, without reflection,in a headlong manner, is true only so far as it goes.M any people have that weakness. W ith him it is nota weakness. I t is a principle of conduct. The impulse

in his case is not ungovernable. I t does not possess himand overthrow his judgment. It is the other wayaround. H e takes possession of the impulse, mount-ing it as it were the enchanted steed of the ArabianNights, and rides it to its kingdom of consequences.What lies at the end is always a surprise; if it is some-thing he doesn't care for, no m atter. Another steed

is waiting. M eaning to do this, living for it, he hasno baggage. The re is nothing behind him. If he haswealth it is portable. H e is at any moment ready. Akind of high vagabond, you see."

uYou almost persuade me to be likewise,1* sighedGoran. H e was of Polish blood.

"Very exciting," I said. "T ha t was Dreadw ind's

torment. H e could not come to rest. H is craving for



16 SATAN'S BUS HE L

excitement was a vast hunger. Yet his outwardness,as you know, his superficial aspect, is a mask of perfect

iserenity. H is physical movem ents are slow , ratherhes itating, or as if retarded. I saw them the firsttime "

"Them?" said Moberly, interrupting."Yes," said Goran. "There's a woman. D idn't

you get that? Ab salom W eave r's girl. Go on."

" at the edge of a desert," I continued. "M y

ow n errand there was one pertaining to oil. I am notan oil expert. But international oil people are inter-ested obliquely in many collateral things: politics,intrigue, personalities, religion, and what not. Suchwork is confidential. For that reason I hesitate to

mention the place explicitly. N o m atter. I t was sucha place as you may see almost anywhere in Southwest

Asia—a misspelled name on your map, a journey's in-terruption, a jagged symbol of eternity sticking out ofthe sand, the tomb of a race untended, mythical tombof a prophet commercialized.

"I was arriving. Th ey were leaving. Th ere wa smuch make-believe commotion about getting them off.Fro m this I knew that he was free with his money. So

he was. H e threw it around, not with any air of van-ity, for there was nobody of his own kind to be im-pressed, but simply because its language was instantlyunderstood and a plentiful utterance of it galvanizedthe action. I wa s the only other sign of W ester n civil-ity on the scene and he never so much as glanced at me,though I stood near by, looking on. H e observed the

preparations, attended to them, spoke now and then to



SATAN'S BUSHEL 17

his guide and interpreter a word or two in the tone ofvoice that dead and sleeping people are not supposed

to hear— and all the time his mind was somewhereelse.

"The only present reality he seemed conscious ofwas the woman. I could not imagine what their rela-tions were. H is manner tow ard her was impersonal*formal, even distant; yet that was not his feeling atall. One could sense beneath the manner an aching

contradiction. H e was absorbed in her utterly. Thereis no other way to say it. W hateve r it was they weredoing, or about to do, concerned her; and she herself,

not what they did, was his concern."And the wom an! A more oblivious human being

could not be described. W hat she was concerned withlay far, far away, or it was something that had neverbeen found, possibly something that did not exist. Onewould have thought she moved in a trance. She sawnothing, said nothing, heard nothing. Even when hercamel got to its feet—a disagreeable sensation that onecould see was new to her body—even then her faceexpressed no awareness of the senses. I t might h a rebeen a camel of her dreams.

"So they went— the stare-blind woman first, the mannext, followed by guides and servants, into the risingsun. Ahead of them, on the horizon, many miles away,rose a glinting pyram idal form. In the middle distancewas the faint perception of a ruined temple they shouldpass, some broken stone columns and the torso of amonumental stone figure seated.

" I t left a vivid picture with me. W hat the picture



18 S A T A N ' S B U S H E L

signified was quest. I made some inquiries about them .All that anybody knew was that they had come and

gon e, no whence or whither. M or e was suspected. Avery old Arab, thinking perhaps that I should feelsome responsibility for a fellow countryman, con-fronted me repeated ly with accusing gestures. Onehand was full of gold which he sho wed; with the otherhand he tapped his forehead and pointed in the direc-tion they had gone.

"T he second time wa s stranger still. I thought itwas. This occurred three months later in Mongolia,north of the Wall, in a country where you meet yourkind only once or twice a day, and then not without asense of personal anxiety. W e passed and they did notsee m e. T ha t wa s all. T he y were mounted on shaggylittle horses, pads for saddles, hair-rope bridles, two

servants follow ing. She was looking straight ahead.H e was still absorbed in her.

"Th en the third time was at Buenos Ayres . T heycame one evening to the gayest hotel, with no luggageor servants, looking desperately weary and travel sore,lo dge d for the night, and sailed the next morning. Ilooked at the registration. Th e name was Jones— A .

Jo ne s and wife. I was sure that was not the man'sright name. I t couldn't be ."

"Put in something about the wom an. I want to seelier," said Goran.

"I've tried," I said."Yes, but something about her appearance," he in-

sisted. "W hat was her type?"

"I can't describe her," I said. "N ot directly in



SATAN'S BUSH EL 19

terms of herself. I never saw her that way. She re -minds me of something symbolic."

"What?" Goran asked."There's a picture of the virgins descending stone

steps. Their feet are bare. They are clad all alike indraperies of classic simplicity, drawn in a little with agirdle just under the arms, giving them a sweet, long-limbed appearance. In their faces there is knowledgewithout experience—knowledge of existence, none of

life. She is that first one with the bent knee thrustingagainst her drape."

"Now I see her," said Goran. "I t's what I thought.Go on."

"A long time later, a year and a half perhaps, I wason my way up the Irawadi R iver. Business pertain ingto oil still. A young Britisher with whom I keep a

vow of friendship was then commissioner of one of theNorthern Burmese provinces, newly appointed; and Iwent out of my pa th to see him. W e had resolved thenature of matter and whether man was risen from alow estate or fallen from a high one, when of a suddenhe thought to say:

" 'One of your mad Americans has broken loose in

my province. T ha t's what you say, isn't it? H e 'stold the British Empire what it cannot do. I'm tryingto keep it from becoming a diplomatic incident.' "

" Where?' I asked." 'Up the river.'" 'Who i s he? '" 'T ha t's another thing,' he said. 'W heth er he 's

going by an alias or has a false passport I can't make



2 0 S A T A N ' S B U S H E L

out. H e says his name is Jones—som ething Jo ne s—A . Jon es, I think. But I have reason to suppose his

real name is—ah—Dread something—yes, Dread-wind. W hy do you look so taken up? D o you knowhim?'

"I told him of a man named Dreadwind, a Chicagowheat speculator, who had become suddenly nonexist-ent; also of the pair I had seen wandering about theworld in a hypnotized condition, and that the name

under which they passed through Buenos Ayres wasA. Jones.

" 'Quite,1 he said. 'I'm sure of it. A romance,de ar ly. I hate to interfere, and yet '

44 'W hat's the row about?' I asked.44 'Perfectly silly!' he said. 4It's about an old teak

tree.'

44 fWhy make a fuss about one teak tree more orless?' I asked. 4You've millions of them.'

44 4Now, you see,' he said, 4it isn't so simple quite.The teak in these forests is controlled by the state andicientifically cultivated. I t has to be cut with referenceto age, condition and new grow th. A certain bit of itis due to be cut. T h e order goe s out. Then it appears

that this particular bit includes one tree for which yourfellow countryman has conceived some sort of wildinfatuation. I don't know what or why. H e won't•ay. But he says— he says—that tree shall not be cut.T h e British Em pire says it shall be. Th ere you are.'

44 W h a t w ill happen?' I asked." 'It will be cut.'

" 4Teak wood is a commercial substance,1 I said.



SATAN'S BU SHE L 21

'Isn 't it a matter money will settle? H e probably hasplenty of that/

" 'Yes, he seems to have a lot of money/ the com-missioner said, rather acidly. *He's offered to buy thewhole forest. T h at was silly, wasn't it? Then hecorrupted the native officials. Bribed them to sparethe tree. That's a very serious offense. The nextthing was that he got some kind of magic or witchcraftto be practiced on the tree until now I understand the

whole place is weird with superstition about it.'"The English understand human idiosyncrasy, envy

it secretly, and are yet quite capable of dealing in anunromantic manner with its troublesome manifesta-tions. This was altogether true of my friend, the com-missioner. H e was greatly annoyed; it seemed to himhis government had been made to appear ludicrous.

It could not cut down a teak tree in its own forest be-cause an American preferred to have it stand. W ell,we put the subject aside, thinking of it still, and talkedabsently of other matters. As we parted he sa id :'You're going tha t way. Perhap s you'll have a lookat this tree-fey person .' And he gave me exact direc-tions.

"My curiosity by this time was absurdly moved, andI pursued it in a straight line—as straight as the nativemeans of transportation perm itted. On the way,with nothing else to think about, I discovered in my-self a sentiment of irrational sympathy for the man;for both of them in fact, but for the man especially.That is the sort of thing I have learned to call a human

chemistry. W e seem to hare nothing to do with it.



22 SATAN'S BUSHEL

D o you know that impulse to serve or befriend in aromantic spirit someone who apparently does not need

you at all, a stranger perhaps, one you have never seenbefore and may never see again? T ha t is what Imean. Then again people who do need you, who haverightful claims upon your goods and interest, andwhose claims you honor, do not move your sympathiesat all. I'm trying to explain the fact that the merethought of being able to assist Dreadwind, or Jones,

to save his tree gave me a sense of charity, gratitudeand pleasure mingled." I had been through this country before. The river

and its affluents at the time of year it was are litteredwith small craft. I was only surprised tha t as weneared my destination the number of them seemed toincrease. Presently there was no doubt of it. M ore

than I had ever seen before at one time so far northwere moored at the landing place. The village was ashort distance inland. A procession was headed th atway. Knowing it to be a small village of bamboohouses with no metropolitan attractions I began toinquire. A religious ceremony was taking place. Oneof a most unusual character. Then I remembered what

the commissioner had said and was not unprepared tohear that the ceremony connected itself with a tree.

" A word about teakwood. I t is in many respectsthe finest wood there is— dark, heavy, oily, does no tcrack, warp or shrink, much used in fine shipbuildingand for ornamental carving. The teak tree grows inisolated, defensive clusters among other trees of the

forest, aloof and lordly, sometimes attaining to a



SATAN'S BU SH EL 23

height of a hundred and fifty feet, with a girth oftwenty-five. But the par ticular teak tree that had be-

come so suddenly an object of preposterous interestwas not one of a cluster. I t stood alone at the edgeof the forest, sole survivor of its group, for it was ofenormous age, much older than anything organic orhuman in the village near by.

"It was not then, however, that I got my impressionof the tree . There was too much going on. In the

act of comprehending the scene itself I grasped thefact that here was something new in Asia. The imag-ination, the cynical daring, the gold, of a Chicagowheat speculator acting through a corrupt, cunning andgreedy priestcraft upon native Oriental superstition ICan you imagine it?

"In a ring around the tree stood ten elephants, or-

nately decorated, their heads pointing in. The mostgorgeously geared one bore on its back a miniaturetemple with an idol indwelling. Next within the ele-phant circle was a ring of holy devotees in propitiatingattitudes. Inside this kneeling circle were the offici-ating magicians, all in loin cloths. One crawled onall fours around the tree, pretending to be an animal.

One was preoccupied with self-torturing gymnastics.One ate a nauseous substance from a dish and spewedit out. Others resting from their grotesque exertionslay prone as if in prayer. A rude clay image sugges-tively mutilated was an object of grimacing attention.Around the body of the tree was wound some red stuffof hateful texture. Above this, attached to the bark,

was the effigy of a gigantic butterfly; and over that a



24 SATAN'S BU SH EL

great leering mask. Four men squatting in a squaredrew snaky, unmusical notes from reed pipes. The re

was no other sound. Incense was burning at the baseof the tree . The pungent odo r of it seemed to floatthrough other smells—the smell of elephants, the smellof people, the smell of Eastern food—without touch-ing or mingling. The spectators numbered severalthousand, and they had been bought without knowingit. W hen their eyes should be sated with the spectacle

of the tree rite there would be a feast in the village.It was then preparing; and the scent of it, savory tothese thin nostrils, was causing the stomach to assertits claims against those of the fascinated soul.

"I turned away in disgust, ashamed of mankind inthe sight of trees and noble beasts. I t is sickeningenough to witness the soul's groveling under fears of

the mind's invention when its puerile acts are spon-taneous and emotionally true; but here was pretenceat the source. The priesthood was bought. Only thepeople were deceived. A t the same time one wasobliged to admire Dreadw ind's shrewdness. H e wascreating an enormous superstition— that is to say, anative public opinion, in defense of the tree. The pub-

lished purpose of all this magic was to cajole, propi-tiate, persuade to beneficence, a spirit— a western spiritand therefore a hostile one—that had come to dwellin the tree. I t followed without saying that the dwell-ing must not be destroyed, for if it were, then ofcourse the angry spirit would burst forth in the formof a blue bull and take its revenge upon the whole

community.



SATAN'S BU SH EL 25

"No figure in the resemblance of Dreadwind wasvisible among the spectators. As the grand impresa-

rio he had a reserved seat and was himself unseen.His dwelling place was a double bamboo house notmore than two hundred yards from the tree. Fro mtwo facts about it—one that it was new and the otherthat the natives avoided it in a curious way—I guessedit was his.

"H e must have observed my approach, for he was a t

the door when I reached it and admitted me silently,with no mark of surprise.

" W h y do you do it? ' I asked, tha t sense of disgustcontrolling my tongue.

"Without answering or reacting in any way what-ever to my question he stood looking out through theblind, holding two slats a little apart for that purpose,with his back to me, as if I had been a common inter-ruption. H e was in slippers, stockings, riding breeches,wore a loose cotton shirt with a purple silk robe overall, and had a turban thing wound around his head.

"H e was very tall. H is hair was light yellow, al-most white; his eyes were blue, expressing a kind of

impersonal wonder; the nose was large and indefinite;the lower part of the face was heavy, denoting sensu-ality tempered by extreme sensitiveness.

"The interior of the house was rather dim; all theblinds were closed. I made out a table on bamboolegs, fast to the floor; also some bent-wood chairs andan iron cot. The chairs and cot were not of native

origin. I wondered how he had got them here. The rewas nothing else but some grass mats on the floor.



26 SATAN'S BUSH EL

"He turned presently, passed me, sat down by thetable and crossed his legs heavily.

" 'What did you say?1 he asked." *I said, why do you do this ? It's abominable.'" 'I t can't hurt the tr e e / he said absently. 'N ot

even if it were so,' he added . This was like an obser-vation, or a comment, upon his own thoughts, whichI was permitted to hear.

" 'If what were so?' I asked.

"Then for the first time he looked at me with atouch of personal interest.

" 'I thought you were an Englishman from the pro-vincial government office,' he said, as if that weresomehow explanatory.

" 'You are the m ost incurious person I ever m et,'I said. 'I might be a product of that magic outside

for any probability I naturally have in relation toyou; and yet you do not ask who or what I am.'

" 'Why should I have to ask?' he said.

"At that I suddenly realized what a meddling, turbidass I looked . I began to apologize and to account formyself, and became extremely uncomfortable, becauseeven to me what I said sounded as if I were making it

up. And that it was true did not save me in the least.My interest and interference alike were gratuitous.H e did not encourage me to g o on ; neither did he offerto stop me. H e listened and show ed no emotion. Itold him under what conditions I had passed him threetimes in the world, how I had got his name—the nameof Jones—from his hotel registration at Buenos Ayres,

and how his whereabouts and identity had been re-



SATAN'S BU SH EL 27

vealed to me in a fortuitous manner by my friend theprovincial commissioner, who was exceedingly annoyed

and obliged me to hear what a countryman of minewas doing in his provincial forest.

" 'As for my being Dreadwind,' he said, when Ihad finished, 'there's no secret about it. I've used an-other name for personal convenience, to avoid curiosityin places where my own name might be known. I amnot hiding. You may tell your friend, the M ister C om-

missioner, that I have also a passport in my legal name,if that's what he's worried about.'

" 'It isn't,' I said." He made no reply to that." 'It's his precious teakwood,' I said."And he made no reply to that, either." 'You 're at an impasse with him,' I said. 'H e can 't

understand why you should be permitted to cross theBritish Empire in the management of its own teak inits own forest, and his official mind is extremely vexed.'

"No answer." 'H e says the tree will be cut,' I said."T he rite apparently had been concluded. The ser-

pentine notes of the reed pipes had now a kind of

rhythm, coming nearer, and there was a sense of heavybodies stirring . The elephants were passing the house.Dreadwind got up to look out again.

" 'It won't be cut,' he said, returning." 'It's my own blundering fault,' I said, 'that I can't

make you see or feel why I have thrust myself intothis thing.'

" 'Why?' he asked.



28 SATAN'S BU SH EL

"There I hung for a minute." 'I don 't know why / I said. *I may have thought

I did. Now that you ask me, I do n't. N o m atter why.Say it pleases me to give you the right to commandmy friendly offices. There is something to be done,if only we can think of it, and I am anxious to do it.'

" 'I know,' he said very simply, putting forth hishand . 'But there is nothing to be done.'

" 'I've told you the commissioner is an old friend of

mine. I've told you also that he is obstinately mindedto cut down your tree.'

" 'He won't, though/ said Dreadwind." 'But/ I said, 'you can't just sit here with your fin-

ger in the lion's eye. The re would never be any peace.You don't want to keep up this ghastly mummeryoutside.'

" 'It 's distasteful/ he said. 'I couldn't think ofanything else, and it works.'

" 'If there was a reason/ I said suggestively. 'Al-most any sort of reason. The commissioner is notofficial to the co re. I know him very well.'

" 'Th ere isn 't/ said Dreadwind, and that was final.

No further that way."I went away knowing just as much as when I came,but with the resolve "

"You didn't see the woman?" Goran asked."N ot that time. I saw not the faintest trace of her.

I've told you it was a double house, a kind of twinaffair. I was in one part of it only— but with the re-

solve, as I was saying, to pry one teak tree loose from



SATAN'S BU SH EL 29

the British Em pire . I had no case. The use of friend-ship is that in a pinch it needs none.

" 'All righ t,' said the commissioner. 'Show me away out.'

"T hat was easy enough, once the mind were inclined.Teakwood was an article of commerce. If an Am eri-can wished to buy a certain quantity more or less andwould agree to cut and deliver it to himself, when, ifand as he wanted it, subject to all the local uses andcustoms, and, furthermore, if he agreed to take it allfrom a certain forest area to be indicated by metes andbounds—why, what if that area contained only onetree? and what if he never took it at all? There wasreally no obstacle. The cutting or not cutting of thatparticular tree was of no interest to the department offorests, because it stood all alone.

" 'Q uite !' said the commissioner. 'You do knowhow to beat the government.'

"The next morning a sheaf of papers went up theriver— the teakwood contract in duplicate, long butlucid; an official covering note from the commissionerto Mr. Dreadwind, and a personal note from me tell-

ing him what it was all about. And with that done Iwent the way of my own business."I heard from the commissioner that the contract

had been returned to him, duly signed, and nothingmore until one day on my return journey a messengerfound me with a note from Dreadwind asking me tovisit him.

"He came to the river bank to greet me." 'Be a little careful,' he said as we turned into the



30 SATAN'S BUSHEL

path . 'I find that nothing happens if you give every-body plenty of room. The re's a '

"As he spoke it was there, standing in the path,barring our way— a cobra on its dignity. W e stoppedof course. I waited to see what he would do . H e wasin no haste to do anything. For some time he lookedat it steadily; then he began to talk to it, in a coaxing,conversational tone, half in earnest, half in jest. Idon 't remember what he said. H e seemed to choose

the words for the sound they made. Presently thesnake dipped its head and glided to one side. W epassed.

" 'You seem to have a way with them,' I remarked." 'I hadn't at first,' he said. 'One learns.'"As we emerged in the clearing where the village

stood I exclaimed, 'How tranquil!'

" 'By contrast, you mean,' he said. 'Yes, thanks toyou.'

" 'What is the state of native superstition now?'I asked.

" 'Indifferent,' he answered. 'I got the magicians toUndo their work. They banished the spirit, shooed itaway. The tree now is believed to be uninhabited.'

"W e were walking toward it. Several times hetook in his breath to speak and then said nothing.IWhen we were close to the tree he turned, and Iturned, and we stood with our backs to the sun. I twas evening. The shadow of the tree lay before us,creeping as we watched it. H ow we came to be watch-ing it I don't quite know. I must have got the sugges-

tion from him. One naturally looks to see what it is



SATAN'S BUSHEL 311

another person has fixed his attention upon; and he wasobserving the shadow with an air of timed expectation,

as if something were about to happen." 'There's an Eastern saying that the shadow of a

thing is its spirit,' he said." 'Do you believe it?' I asked, not in earnest." 'That isn't the point,' he said."We were silent again."'Huh!' I exclaimed.

" 'Y o u see it? ' he asked." 'Yes. W hat an improbable accident.'"All at once the shadow had assumed a human out-

line— the outline of a man from the waist up, in profile.It was not only very distinct, like a silhouette; it hadcharacter. One knew the kind of man it was, or hadbeen, or would be if he had ever existed. H e would be

a man who leaned forward in his steps, pressed life foran answer, lived for defeat and loved little things.

" 'If you go to the top of the shadow and get thetree against the sun you will not see how it happens,'said Dreadwind.

"I did as he suggested, with an impulse to walkaround the shadow instead of through or on it; and it

was as he said. The mass of the tree did not forecastthe shadow. How ever, I shouldn't have thought itwould, in that case or any other.

"Just then the figure of a woman appeared, walkingtow ard us from the house. I recognized her at once.She came straight up to us and held out her hand tome. There was no introduction.

" 'M rs . Jones particularly wished you to come,



32 SATAN'S BUSHEL

he said. I noticed that he hesitated slightly at thename.

"She nodded her head slowly to confirm this andthen the three of us stood watching the shadow.

" 'It doesn't change,' said Dreadwind." I had already noticed that fact. But the time of its

phenomenal duration was really very short—not morethan five or six minutes, for then the sun went downwith a lurch behind the forest. As this occurred and

the shadow was extinguished she went close to the treeand touched it lingeringly. I t occurred to me that theydid this every evening — that they stood togetherwatching the outline come and go and that then in-variably she touched the tree in just that way. Theirmovements had a settled pattern, even that with whichhe took possession of her and turned her toward the

house again."She was no longer in that somnambulant conditionI have tried to describe. That state had been suc-ceeded by one much more subtly enigmatic. She wasalive to the realities of her environment, listened at-tentively, reacted normally to whatever happened,spoke with direct simplicity—and was like an object

seen through an inverted telescope. She was near asa phenomenal fact and at the same time enormouslyremote to the senses. N ot all the time. The re weremoments, two or three, when she seemed suddenlymagnified as if the telescope had been turned around.Her attitude toward Dreadwind was one of implicitbelieving. I t was distinctly not an attitude of seeing.

She seemed to have no sense perception of him what-



SATAN'S BUSHEL 33;

ever. H er gaze never lingered upon him in the natu ralway of women. The fancy occurred to me that he

would give the whole world, if he had it, to be touchedby her once as I had seen her touch the tree . Therewas about them an air of living in suspense, of waitingtogether for an imminent thing that was taking itstime.

"T here was a frugal dinner of rice and fruit. C on-versation withered and died. Our words rattled aboutthe room like seeds in a dry gourd. Such questions ashow long they meant to stay, whether they liked it,and what it was they liked, were foreclosed by circum-stances. I tried oil and he wasn't interested; thendescriptions of the country farther north where Ihad been and she at once betrayed symptoms of dis-tress. Neither of them seemed in the least to care forthe vocal amenities and we fell at length into uttersilence. Presently she rose , thanked me for coming,shook hands again with a cool, firm handclasp, and,said good night. H e excused himself and retired withher, going, as I supposed, to the other part of thehouse.

"He was uneasy in his mind when he returned,walked about a bit, then sat down and began to smoke,staring at the ceiling.

" 'M rs . Jones wishes it,' he said. 'D o you mind? '" 'Whatever it is,' I said." 'I think I told you she was particularly anxious

that you should come,' he said. 'Just now she sur-prised me very much by asking me to tell you every-thing from the beginning—the whole story, I mean, of



34 SATAN'S BU SH EL

why we are here and how it came. She was sure youwouldn 't mind.1

" 'She knew/ I said."H e looked at me quickly. 'She knows many things

that cannot be learned,' he said."W ith tha t he began. I shall not try to reproduce

his words. H e left much to be filled in by the under-standing, especially in those passages which dealt inti-mately with her. H e was naturally an inarticulate

person. I shall tell it broadly in the third person.If it isn't always clear, interrupt me.'7

"Move it," said Goran."Did the shadow you speak of resemble Weaver?"

Sylvester asked: "The girl's father, I mean.""As it were his own," I said."And now Dreadwind is talking?"

"Yes. Only, as I've said, I shall not use his words.I undertake to tell you what he told me; and that wasmore than he utte red in syllables. T he full strange-ness of it occurred to me afterw ard. I t occurs to menow—there through an Oriental night, in the land ofthe White Elephant and sacred python, to hear a mantalking of the Chicago wheat pit, the American grain

crop, Western Kansas, the Atchison, Topeka andSanta Fe Railroad, all these things leading to a haunt-ed teak tree in the Burmese forest."



C H A P T E R I I

T H R E A D W IN D was born in New York C ity .*~^ When he was thirteen he got a job as door boyin a Wall Street bucket shop, and his widowed mothersupposed he had begun a career in banking. W h a t

begins in a bucket shop is a career in pure gambling.Pretending to be a broker, the proprietor of a bucketshop is the same as a race-track bookmaker or thekeeper of a gambling house. People bet with him onthe rise and fall of shares. If they guess wrong hewins their money. If a number of them happen toguess right he absconds. T h at is why the bucket shop

is both immoral and illegal; why also the bucket shopfraternity is beyond the pale in W all Street. Its mem-bers bear a stigma, like people of the underworld; theycannot be received in respectable financial society.They walk in the same thoroughfares; they eat anddrink in the same restau rants. The unsophisticatedeye is unable to see wherein they differ from respect-

ability itself. Some of them are very likable to know,yet one shall not know them — that is, not without be-smirching oneself with the stigma that is theirs.

The re Dreadw ind started . A t fourteen, because hewas tall and alert, he was put to the blackboard, mark-ing up prices for the bettors to see, just as the names ofhorses and the betting odds against them are chalked

up in a pool room. A t fifteen he began to bet for him-35



36 SATAN'S BUSHEL

self. After seventeen he lived by gambling. H e knewnothing about stocks beyond the names of them; buthis flair for guessing their fluctuations was uncanny

and filled his elders with anguished amazem ent. Aftera while the keepers of that bucket shop declined to takehis bets. Then he went to ano ther. H is mother sup-posed he was advancing, as well she might, since neverbefore in her life had she known what it was like tohave plenty of money. A year later she died in greatcomfort.

Dreadwind was twenty-seven when one day he tookall of his gains in cash and crossed the line into therectified air of W all Street's upper world. H e did thissimply for the reason that he had exhausted the possi-bilities of the other. One after ano ther the bucket-shop keepers declined to take his bets, because of hisconsistent winning, until a t last the biggest one flour-

ishing at that time had consented to let him go on onlyprovided he would confine himself to certain stocks andkeep within certain limits of play. "I'l l go where thereare no limits," he said. And that day he appeared inthe office of a Stock Exchange broker, asking to opena speculative account. And of course, his origin beingwhat it was, nobody knew him there. The sequel to

that episode we already know. In a very short timehe encountered limits on the Stock Exchange. Soagain he took all his wealth in cash and departed forthe Chicago wheat pit, where there were no limits,leastwise none that had ever been discovered.

In all his life up to that time he had never been westof the North River, never had been thirty miles outside



SATAN'S BU SHE L 37

of New York C ity. H e had noticed vegetation in theparks and sometimes in suburban gardens. Agricul-

ture was a word that had a pharmaceutical sound;wheat was the raw stuff of bread and rolls, and a farm,to judge from the way people spoke of having beenborn there , was a romantic place to come from. Onthe way to C hicago from New Y ork he appears to havebeen so engrossed in the study of wheat-pit dynamicsthat for all he saw out-of-doors he might as well have

been riding in a subway train. H e studied wheat, ashe had studied stocks, purely from the point of viewof fluctuations. That was a sound way for his pur-pose. You do not gamble or speculate in things, but inthe prices of things.

He gambled in wheat quotations as he had gambledin stock quotations, knowing only concerning the thing

itself that it was a vegetable substance called grain,and never thinking of that . All that interested himwas the symbol of it, the word wheat, against whichwere other symbols—that is to say, simple Arabicnumerals expressing changes of price.

This is very strange if you do not take it for granted— that a man may buy and sell millions of bushels of

wheat with not the remotest interest in the wheat it-self, as a food, as a vital commodity, as a sign of civili-zation. H is sole idea of it is a word on the dial tha thangs over the wheat pit with a hand spinning roundto indicate the alterations of value. Dreadwind knewof course the statistics of wheat. H e knew also everydetail of the mechanism of wheat speculation. Knowl-

edge of that character is easily acquired. M any have



38 SATAN'S BUSHEL

it who never gamble or speculate in grain prices. Whatmade him notable at once in the wheat pit, marked

him out as one to be wary of, was the faculty weknow and cannot define, an instinct perhaps, or in itslowest term a lucky way with the secrets of futurity.H e was not infallible. H e made heavy losses; yet inthe average, which is all that counts, he did almostfrom the time of his advent in the wheat pit out-trade,outguess, outreach, the hardest, most glassy-minded

crowd of gamblers in the world. Nobody ever knewwhere or how he stood. H is methods were new, dar-ing, pyramidal; they were very dangerous, too, for heseemed always trying to prove to himself that the gamewas in fact limitless. W hat might have been thesequel now is needless to imagine. T hat line of fatewas interrupted.

One day he was standing away from the wheat pit,idling his mind, when the trifling incident occurred thatchanged the course of his life. There was no ex-citement in the pi t; the market was dull. N ear D read-wind a blue-nosed man and a moldy broker wereplaying checkers. A third man in big glasses with alittle gray hat pulled far down in front sauntered up

and stood watching the game. The blue-nosed man,without looking up, accosted him lewdly.

"Been up to your farm, ain't you, Joe?""Yes," said the man in the little gray hat, his feath-

ers beginning to rise."How's rye look?""Fine," said the other, biting the word.

In two more moves the blue-nosed man lost the



SATAN'S BU SH EL 39

checker game. Then he rose, stalked across the floorto the little pit where rye and barley are bought and

sold for future delivery. There he stopped and beganto wave his arms. The man in the little gray hatturned to Dreadwind.

"Do you see him?—what he's doing?"" W h a t ? ""H e's selling rye. Selling it ! You heard him. H e

asked me how rye was looking. Rye is looking fine,

I told him. Now he's over there selling it.""Isn't that the thing to do?" Dreadwind asked."That's the very thing to do," came the answer

from under the little gray ha t. "T hat's about all wedo do. I know him. H e' s off. H e 's well started . Theprice of rye is w ha t? Ninety cents. H e won't let itcome up for air, not if he can help it, until it's sixty.In a few minutes inquiries will be coming in over all thewires. W ha t's the matter with rye? Th ere's nothingthe m atte r w ith rye except I said it was looking fineand he's over there selling its head off. W hat will goout on the wires ? W hat will be printed in every news-paper tomorrow morning? Th ere's a strong bearmovement in rye. The speculative position of rye isvery weak. The re's going to be too much rye. Th ere 'sno demand for rye. Rye is sick. And what happens?Thousands of little speculators all over the countrybegin to shout sell it— sell it! sell it! Six weeks fromnow the farmers who produce rye, who plow and sowand pray and sweat for rye, they will have the real rye

to sell and the price will be sixty cents. The farmer hasgot to sell it. H e can't afford to wait. W ho will buy



40 SATAN'S BUSHEL

it at sixty cents ? The same gamblers who are sellingit now at ninety cents. And when they are all through

the price will go back to what rye is worth—eighty-five, ninety cents again. The farm er has a hell of achance."

"I don't see yet," said Dreadwind.uNob od y sees yet," said the little gray hat. "T he

farmers don't see yet. I don't see yet. W hat I don'tsee is what right a man who never worked a day in

his life, who produces nothing, who doesn't knowwhether rye grows on a bush or with the peanuts—what right he has to get up from a game of checkersand sell in five minutes more rye than a hundred farm-ers can grow in a y ea r?"

"You own a farm?" Dreadwind asked."Yes, I own a farm."

"You are a farmer?"" No , sir. I'm not a farmer. I know better. I own

a farm because I like it, and it costs me money.""What do you call yourself, then?""I'm a cash grain dealer. I've been a cash grain

dealer for thirty-three years and I say what I damnplease about you gamblers."

And as that was all he damn pleased to say justthen he pulled his hat farther down in front andwalked away.

Dreadw ind was astonished. If a member of theBoard of Trade could talk in that manner againstspeculation, and with impunity, then there was muchabout this institution for him to learn . H e looked

around him as one may for whom the aspect of fa-



SATAN'S BU SHE L 41

miliar things has been suddenly altered, made unfa-miliar, by the light of a new idea. The blue-nosed

man was still waving his arms, and the price of rye, asDreadwind could see from where he stood, was alreadydown a cent and a half a bushel. And somewherefarmers were producing the grain that this man wasselling. Th e moldy broker, who had heard it all, gotup from the checker board, yawned, stretched andturned toward the wheat pit, looking very bored.

"Who was that man in the gray hat talking to me?"Dreadwind asked him.

"He's one of the lunatics we keep in this asylum,"said the broker. " 'JV nev er meet him before? H e'sover there at the cash tables."

The cash tables. Dreadw ind knew there were ta-bles—three rows of marble-topped tables—at one side

of the great room . Vaguely he knew also that the menat those tables were grain dealers, not gamblers orspeculators. Th ey were buyers and sellers of the grainitself for cash, hence the term , cash tables. But hehad never been interested in that function of the grainmarket; he had never once been on that side of theroom where the tables were.

Walking to a point from which he could view theexchange floor as a whole he stood for some time look-ing at it. The panorama was quite new to him.

On the right were the telegraph and cable stations,each one's premises indicated by an illuminated glasssign as if it were on a public stree t. H e recognizedthese stations as ganglia from which nerve fibers radi-ated to every part of the world.



42 SATAN'S BU SH EL

On the left were the cash tables, needing about asmuch room as the wire stations.

Between them, occupying most of the enormousfloor space, were tne nits— those hectagonal hollowrostrums with three steps up and three steps down;one for wheat, one for corn, one for oats, one for ryeand barley and one for lard and pork.

And how much less man is excited by what he cansee and touch than by what he imagines!

From the telegraph and cable stations came thesound of clicking insects swarming. From the cashtables came no audible sound at all. M en movedplacidly among them, peering into one-quart samplebags, sniffing the grain, feeling it, judging it, writingdown their bargains on little cards, with no fuss orwhobub.

But from the pits, out of the bodies of frantic men,came that ceaseless, fluctuating roar so unlike any othersystem of vibrations audible in the world that naturalsounds, even that of the human voice at conversationalpitch or the ring of a coin falling on the floor, mightbe heard through it or in spite of it— every tone inthe range of the male voice from falsetto to bass; each

tone produced egotistically in strife to be heard; notwo tones mingling, for if they did the identity of bothwould be lost in a chord; no rhythm, no predictablerepetition, nothing for the ear to rest upon—a mon-strous cacophony to stretch the nerves. The worsethe cacophony the more the nerves are stretched andthe more they are stretched the worse the sound, until

men are a little crazed. And the sound is as absurd



SATAN'S BU SH EL 43

as that of the lion, who roars not to frighten the junglebut to move himself. It is unnecessary, that is to say,

because business in the pit is not transacted vocally.Buying and selling is by signals of the hand . If manwere not an animal excited by the sound of his ownvoice the pit might be as silent as the tomb.

"Voice of the world bargaining for the great primalnecessity—food," writes the Board of Trade publicityagent in a lyric moment. But what passes in the pit

is a mythical commodity, not food; millions, billions,of bushels of grain that have no existence whatever.An imaginary world with an imaginary stomach clam-oring for imaginary food.

Dreadwind was thinking. In a week he had gonethrough the motions of buying and selling ten millionbushels of wheat. T hat wheat had no reality. The

whole ten million bushels would not fill a pint measure.I t could go into one's eye and not be felt. There wasin all that buying and selling only the idea of wheat.Simply, he had been gambling in the price of it. Sud-denly it occurred to him that he would not know wheatif he saw it. W hat was it like?

H e walked tow ard the cash tables. Passing fromthe area of the pits to that of the tables was likechanging one's world. W hat he noticed at first wasthe difference in men. H ere were men who workedin ponderable stuff. Their way was a way with sub-stance; their eyes were quiet, not restless and glitter-ing. The re were men who went from the tables to thepit and others who went from the pit to the tables,back and forth like emissaries; but there were men in



44 SATAN'S BU SH EL

the pit like Dreadwind who had never any business atthe tables and men at the tables who knew not their

way to the pit; and these were two distinct worlds.The tops of the tables were crowded with little paperbags, each one containing a certified sample of a car-load of grain—wheat, corn, oats, barley, rye, and soon. Dreadw ind could not tell one from the other.He read first the labels and then compared the grains.The day's cash business was nearly finished. Most of

the samples were abandoned. They were to be sweptaway. A number of bags had been overturned.Dreadwind began to touch the grain. Running it

through his fingers gave him a voluptuous sensation.He was seized with a longing, a tactile hunger, toplunge his bare arms into a mass of grain, even tobathe in it. But here were only these quart-bags full.

He thrust his fingers into them, then poured the grainover his wrists, and the thrill he got from its cool,clean, caressing contact was inexpressible. It s frag-rance stirred cells of hidden knowledge.

I am trying to tell you what it was that occurred tohim then and there. It was very important. H ecould not explain it. Neither can I. I t was an emo-

tional experience. Knowledge was a word he foundafter much groping; it seemed to say what he felt.

" I know what he m eant," said M oberly. "Gran*

does that to you."



SATAN'S BU SH EL 45

"Can you describe what it does to you?" I asked." N o , " he answered, meditating. Then he sa id: " I t

tells you something—something you already know andcan't remember."

W e stared at him. H e had never been suspected ofth at kind of feeling about grain— of any feeling aboutit whatever. And he did know. For tha t was sayingin another way what Dreadwind said.

.*.

It was characteristic of Dreadwind that he set outimmediately to track wheat to its source. H is curi-osity, once moved, isolated its object and pursued itwith a single eye. Thirty-six hours later he was in

Western Kansas, on the Sante Fe Railroad, lying in aPullman berth with his nose pressed against the win-dow screen. H is senses were weary and staggeringunder a load of new impressions. And he could no tsleep. H is tentative destination was farther on. I twould be reached about breakfast time.

Riding by railway through the wheat fields on a very

warm May evening is an exquisite experience if yougive yourself to it. All sounds are muted. Thosethat are naturally harsh become pleasing and satiny.I suppose this is from the fact that the grassy oceanabsorbs them, somewhat as snow does. The shriekof the locomotive at road crossings is like an echo.The wheels on the rails sound like a lathe tool cutting

soft iron. You would think the train was stealing its



46 SATAN'S BUSHEL

way on tiptoe for fear of waking something. And allthe time the air is vibrant and musical with the rhythm

of phantom castanets playing just on and under thelowest pitch audible to the human ear. And that aro -matic pungency of the growing w heat! The smell ofthe sea, so fresh and clean, is a fabricated, purifiedsmell. This is a living untainted essence, originallysweet—flavor of sunlight trapped in the dew.

The train stopped. All Dreadw ind could see of the

place was a cross of light formed on the wire screenof the car window by a country street lamp in the dis-tance. A medley of voices spread suddenly on thenight air— hotel bus drivers calling for fares, trainmenand station agents disputing in haste, a woman insist-ing on what was wrong with corporate management—and above all that vocal commotion in the human pond

could be heard the scolding of frogs and the titter ofcrickets.

Of a sudden Dreadwind decided to alight at thisplace. H e astonished the po rte r by appearing on thecar platform with his bag in one hand, his collar andtie in the other, just as the train was starting . A mo-ment later he stood on the cinders watching the red and

green tail lights of the train disappear down the rightof way. Then he tied his shoes, put on his collar, andlooked around. H e had been in the last coach. T hestation was a hundred yards away. H e turned hishead and when he looked again the station had van-ished. The lights were out. A motor of the waggle-tail species made the familiar sound of a buzz saw

tearing its way through a knot and coming suddenly



SATAN'S BU SHE L 47

into soft stuff. After that a cool stillness descendedupon the place, pierced by the hum of the telegraph

wires and the hymn of insect life.Dreadwind was alone in the country for the first

time in his life.He walked toward the station; its mass came into

outline through the darkness. A voice within re-sponded to his knock. W hat did he want?

"W here is the tow n?" he asked.

"Up the road about a mile," said the voice.The re seemed but one way. I t was the way the

motor had gone. But tha t was the wrong way, andpresently Dreadwind was walking on a smooth dirtroad that wound its way through the wheat like a pathin a dark green sea, gently, ceaselessly rippling.

That dulcet agitation of the air was now a vast,

multitudinous harmony. It is so nearly inaudible thatif one strains the sense of hearing it is lost; when thesense is relaxed then it may be heard again. There isa faint bass drone, never changing, never ceasing; overthat, sometimes very distinct, is a shrill antiphonaleffect, swelling and falling in two beats. In and outplay the little melodies. Some of them you can hearclearly; others perhaps you only imagine because theyought to be there to complete the symm etry. Youcannot hear the rush of the world through space be-cause mercifully that sound is so pitched that it cannotregister in our ears. But it is the re. You know it isthere; and you can somewhat imagine it. And belowthe range of human hearing is another world of sound,wonderfully orchestrated; here and there musical frag-



48 SATAN'S BUSHEL

ments break faintly through. And more of this ma-jestic, submerged composition is audible on a May

night amid the adolescent wheat than at any othertime or place on earth.You must remember that all of this was to Dread-

wind a new and mystical experience. H e had the ad-vantage of touching it for the first time as one whosesensibilities and imagination are fully developed. Onewhose acquaintance with nature begins in childhood

may never feel this tota l wonder. Too much of itis already familiar before the curiosity of intellect isadded to that of the senses.

"Wheat 1" he was saying to himself; "Wheat!" asif it were a new word, one that he had never pro-nounced before. There flashed upon his mind a pic-ture of the wheat pit; he remembered its smell and

sound and atmosphere; and turning again to the wheathe felt—here I use his word—he felt there was some-thing he must acknowledge. W hat it was he did notknow. But it would be abject— that again is his word—some form of abject acknowledgment.

In that very instant he was startled by a whisperingthat arose everywhere at once, grew louder, came

swiftly nearer, and became suddenly a prolonged hiss.I t ceased as abruptly as it began . A little gust of nightwind had swept the wheat. H e knew this. H e sawthe w heat running in the wind, saw it change color withthe play of the starlight upon the lighter undersideof its green att ire . Nevertheless he was shaken downto his toes . Knowing what it was did not cancel theemotion. I t occurred again a few minutes later and



SATAN'S BU SH EL 49

again it shook him. H e did not care to hear it a thirdtime 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 wasa grain elevator in the vicinity. There were three. H ewent to the nearest one. A load of wheat was standingon the scale and three men were disputing about it.One was a farmer, whose grain it was. H e was on thewagon seat, slantwise, holding the reins loosely and

turned his gaze slowly between the other two. Thegrain buyer stood in the high doorway, half his lengthshowing above the wagon. H e wore a round felt hatand was covered with the fine gray glaze that comesfrom contact with grain . It is not the impalpable pow-der tha t marks a miller and makes him pale. It is lessopaque, lies over color transparently like a bloom, andgives the skin a kind of sheen.

The third man was a figure. He could see into thewagon from the ground. H e stood on one foo t; theother rested on the wheel hub. H is hands were knitand the bent left arm lay on the high edge of thewagon box. H is aspect was mainly sardonic. The

day was very w arm ; yet he wore coat, waistcoat, collarand tie; a muffler hung loosely about his neck, the endsdangling. H is age was perhaps sixty.

He and the grain buyer were looking at each othersteadily. The grain buyer was angry. A red glowshowed through the glaze on his cheek bones. Theold man was ironically suave.

"No. 2," said the grain buyer doggedly.



50 SATAN'S BU SH EL

" N o . i, " said the old man. "N ow we've said it threetimes."

They were disputing about the grade of the grainin the wagon, whether it should be called No. I orN o. 2.

"Take it away yonder," said the grain buyer."Y onder 's a place you 're not thinking of," said the

old man. "W e're going to sell it here . It isn't as ifyou were full and didn't want any wheat. You've of-

fered to buy it for No. 2, which means you want it ifyou can undergrade it."" 'Tain't yours anyhow," said the grain buyer, look-

ing at the farmer on the wagon seat, who just thenlooked away, apparently content to let his protagonistsettle it.

"N or yours," said the old man. "N ot till you've

bought it as N o . I, and no dockage. YouVe got arecord, young man. A record. Tw o years ago youwere declared incompetent to buy grain . The stateboard of inspectors suspended you and closed yourelevator. You were competent enough. T hat wasn'tit. W hat you took in as N o. 3 at one door went outas N o. 2 at the other. Grain improved one grade over

night just by association with you. I t got educated.This wheat you 're looking at is already educated. Ifyou can't see your way clear to buy it as No. 1 we'lldrive it all the way over to Hutchinson and report youto the state inspectors. But you will see your way clear.And when you have you will mix this fine No. 1 wheatwith a lot of musty No. 3 you've got inside, one bushel

to five* and sell the lot for N o. 2. . . . I know you."



SATAN'S BUSHEL SI

The grain buyer, leaning over the wagon, plungedhis arms into the grain several times in different places;

lifting them with the palms of his hands upturned heraised wheat from the bottom and let it fall again inyellow cascades. Bending still far ther, with his handson the edge of the wagon, he brought his nose to theplaces where the grain had been upheaved and sniffedfor odors. Then he stood up and scanned it with hiseye, betraying indecision.

"No smut, no burn, no garlic," said the old man."I see you looking at it. Scripture says if thy righteye offend three , pluck it out. Your left alone wouldbe enough to try the children of men. I t would somagnify two grains of oats in a wagonload of wheatas to make a pound per bushel dockage. Get thekettle."

The grain buyer reached inside the door and pickedup from the floor his test kettle— a one-quart b rassmeasure attached to a hand-beam scale so graduatedthat the reading at the point where the sliding weightbalances the kettleful of grain is exactly the weight ofthe wheat per bushel. H e filled the kettle to overflow-ing, 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 thekettle into the wagon, disappeared inside, stooping toset the kettle down, and reappeared with several sieves

in his hands. For a moment he hesitated. Then he



52 SATAN'S BUS HE L

cast the sieves into the darkness behind him, and leanedagainst 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, hishands behind him, waiting for the farmer to unload.Once he stopped suddenly and gave Dreadwind a keenlooking over. They did not speak.

Unloading the grain was a simple m atter. A t oneend of the scale platform a trapdo or lifted. Th e otherend 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.I t took only a minute altogether. The farmer wentaround to the office to be paid. W hen he returned with

the proceeds in his hand he offered some money to theold man. Dreadw ind could not see how much. It wasprobably the difference between what the farmer alonewould have got for his wheat as No . 2 and what the oldman had bullied the buyer into paying for it as No. I,and that difference might have been five cents a bushel,o r five dollars on the load. The old man declined themoney with an indignant gesture.

"I don't do that for money," he said. uNot that ."T h e farmer was embarrassed. They drove off to-

gether, sitting far apart on the wagon seat, with a feel-ing of strangeness between them.

The grain buyer was still standing in the doorway

with his feet crossed.



SATAN'S BUSHEL 53

"A tough customer," said Dreadwind. "Who is

he ? "

Wearily the grain buyer withdrew his gaze from thesky, measured and comprehended Dreadwind, thenetepped inside and slammed the door.



CHAPTER II I

TT\READWIND walked back to the hotel, revoly-* * ^ ing in his mind a project and thinking at the sametime on what he had seen. Th us was wheat handled.It had taken a farmer with assistance twenty minutes

to sell a wagon load of wheat. T h a t was io o bushels.In the wheat pit the minimum quantity of wheat thatcan be bought and sold—the gambling unit—is 5000bushels, and it changes hand by signal in the twinklingof an eye. H ow different! The difference betweenreal and imaginary wheat. And how strange all thisenvironment was to a wheat gambler 1

The hotel was such a structural vanity as has beenrising of recent years in the wheat and cattle towns,extra-modern and sure of it down to the brass name-plate for the clerk on duty; nothing newer, handier,smarter, more superfluous, in Kansas City itself—andnobody in the least awed by it. Visitors go aboutwith their eyebrows raised. Native personages, to

show how modern they are, lounge about in their shirtsleeves, without collars, put their feet on the velvetupholstery and drop ashes and matches on the imita-tion oriental carpets.

Dreadwind came back to it by a side street, havingmissed the main thoroughfare by one block, and en-tered through a door that obviously gave into the hotel

and yet had no sign or legend upon it. Inside was a54



SATAN'S BUSHEL SS

narrow hall; and halfway down this hall was an open-ing with two swinging wicker doors, the use of which

was to screen the interior. The re was nothing overthese doors or on them to indicate what might be tak-ing place inside; but by certain familiar sounds Dread-wind very easily guessed. H e pushed the doors openand saw what he expected. I t was a spacious roomfilled with chairs in rows. Across one wall was a largeblackboard on which a boy chalked up grain quotations

received from a telegraph operator at a sounder to oneside. At the left were some partitioned spaces, onewith a door marked "Office," one with a windowmarked "Orders" and one with a window marked"C ash ier." Over the blackboard in large gilt letterswas a sign: "Anthony Jumper— Broker— M emberChicago Grain Exchange—Grain and Stocks."

It was a bucket shop— a gambling place. The win-dows were all screened. M ore than twenty customerswere present in the chairs, some of them farmers, someevidently important citizens of the community, includ-ing the local banker, all a little furtive and trying veryconsciously to conceal it. Dreadwind was beguiled. Aleopard 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 win-

dow. H e 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



56 SA TA N 'S BU SH EL

M ay wheat," and pushed it through the window t ogether with two one-thousand-dollar bills.

The silly young order clerk had more vanity thancommon sense. H e had never seen an order as largeas that. H e ought not to have taken it on his ownresponsibility. But having made a high spit he couldno t chew dust. All that he did with the shock of sur-prise, more than to swallow it, was to adjust his noseglasses with an anaemic gesture of slight personal

discomfort."All right, sir," he said.Dreadwind sat down. M ay wheat was 90 cents on

the blackboard. In less than two minutes a boy broughthim a memorandum read ing : "Sold 200M M aywheat at 89%."

H e was astonished. The celerity with which the

report was returned proved what he already knew.Th is was a bucket shop. H is orde r had not actuallybeen executed. This is to say, the wheat had not beensold by telegraph in the wheat pit at C hicago. The rewas only the pretense of this having been done. Allthat had happened was that a bet had been entered onthe books of the concern— a bet between Anthony Jum -

per and an unknown client on the price of 200,000bushels of wheat. But a bet of th at size was rath erlarge to be accepted with all coolness in a small-townbucket shop. And Dreadwind was curious to see wh atwould come of it. T he price of wheat began to fall.The next quotation made it 8 9 ^ , then 8 9 ^ , then

Presently the wicker doors flew open and shut again.



SATAN'S BU SH EL 57

M r. Jumper was back from lunch. H e was a bald,brisk little man with an ingratiating manner plated

upon a metallic surface. Firs t he stopped in the office.A minute later he was with the young man behind theorder window to see what business had been doing inhis absence. Suddenly he burst forth in a great hurry,crossed the room toward the blackboard, spoke a wordto the telegraph operator, and went directly back be-hind the order window. The re he conversed in low

tones with the young man, all the time regardingDreadwind with a shrewd slanting look.

Anyone who knows a bucket shop will understandthis pantomime. Jum per saw Dreadw ind's transactionin 200,000 bushels of wheat as tKe young man hadentered it on the betting sheet. Then he saw on theblackboard tha t the price of wheat was falling. The

unknown customer was winning. H is first act was totell the telegrapher to stop passing up prices— to sit onthem until further notice. T ha t would give him timeto think. Having thus postponed disaster he wentback behind the window to have a good look at Dread-wind and resolve a course of action. All of this Dread-wind 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. H is instinct was sound. H e knew the kind ofperson Dreadwind was.

"This is no place for you," he said quietly, in a con-fidential voice. "W e can 't handle your business."

"But you have it," said Dreadwind, showing the

memorandum on which it was w ritten : "Sold 2 00M



58 SATAN'S BUSHEL

M ay wheat at 8 9 % ." T h at was binding. W ith anuncontrollable impulse Jumper reached for the paper.

Dreadwind gently drew it back."Y ou 're a good sport," said Jum per. "I can size a

man up. And you 're an old hand at this game. I cansee that with one eye. You don't want to upset me,do you? This is just a little affair here . I'm onlystarting for myself. Took over a business I was work-ing for."

"What's the matter with your wire service?" Dread-wind asked. "Your quotations have stopped."

"Honest, now," said Jumper, ignoring the question," I can 't handle your business. The bank roll wo n'tstand it. You know how tha t is. That boy was allalone there when you came in. H e didn 't know anybetter. H e 's a nice boy. Go t an old mother to look

after. Now man to man— we understand each other— just m an to man, let 's call it off."

"I can read the telegraph instrument," said Dread-wind. " I know what the price of wheat is. It' s 88J^ .I hear it. And the last price on the board is 8 9 ^ . "

Jum per gave vent to a startled sinner's oath . "Youain't one of them ringers that goes around busting up

little fellows like me ? You ain't, are you ? No. Youain 't. I can see th at ."

"If you do n't let those quotations go up on the b oardI'll tell everybody what kind of game you are running,"said Dreadwind.

Jumper looked around the room with a desperateair, scanning the wide, wide ocean for a bit of friendly

wreckage. Then he relaxed, puffing out his breath .



SATAN'S BU SH EL 59

"I 'm up the flue if you do ," he said. "U p , up .G on e! Busted! All right. Go ahead and see what

you get. N o, now listen. See here. You are a goodsport all the same. I'm not wrong about a man likeyou. Let me slip you this two thousand and you tearup tha t piece of pap er. W ould you take advantage ofme when there was only that idiot alone in the shop?And he with an old mother to think about?"

"W ell, on one condition," said Dreadwind. " I want

you to tell me something.""I' ll tell you anything," said Jum per. "Only first

let's get this off my mind.""N ot ye t," said Dreadw ind. "F irst, tell me, who

is tha t ""Please," pleaded Jumper, "let me slip you this

money and tear up that piece of paper."

"I'm asking," said Dreadwind, "who is that totempole with the owl face in the last chair behind us?"

The person he indicated was the old man who hadbullied the grain buyer at the elevator. H e enteredthe room right after Dreadwind and had been regard-ing him ever since in an overt manner. W ith Jum per,Dreadw ind was not really serious. All the time he

meant to take the back money and cancel the bet. Buthe could not resist the impulse to stretch it a bit; andcasting about for some pretext on which to prolongthe bucket-shop keeper's agony he thought of the oldman, who had evidently followed him from the ele-vator.

Jumper screwed round in his chair.

"H im ? H e's nobody," he said. "H e comes with



60 SATAN'S BUSHEL

the chinch bugs about this time of year. Never was inhere before. But I'm only starting for myself, as Itold you. I used to see him in the place I was work-ing."

"What's his name?""Weaver .""His first name?""Absalom. W ha t about him? H e' s queer, tha t's

all.""What's queer about him?""N othing you can say. Just the way he comes and

goes. All the farmers know him.""Does he ever trade?""N o t that I know of. I never saw him trade .""But you've heard of his trading?""I've heard it said he had something once and lost

it trading.""Where does he live?""N ot around here. I'm telling you, he comes and

goes. T hat 's all I know. Please let me slip you thismoney. It 's burning a hole in me."

Dreadwind handed him the slip of paper on whichtheir bet was recorded and Jumper surreptitiously re-

turned him his two one-thousand-dollar bills."W ait a minute," said Jumper. H e went again tothe blackboard, not hurriedly this time, and spoke ina casual manner to the telegraph er. The telegraph ermade no vocal response; but all at once the quotationsbegan to go up on the board. Jum per returned toDreadwind and sat down.

"Now, I don't want you to think I run this place



SATAN'S BU SH EL 61

crooked," he said. " I don 't. It 's straight. There'sno use trying to fool you. W e talk the same language.

W hat I'm saying is honest. I never stopped the quo-tations that way before. I wouldn 't. But you had mewhere I couldn't help myself. You know yourself howthat is."

Dreadw ind nodded his head. Jum per went on."O f course you do. I'd 'a ' gone up the flue in a

minute. N o , sir, when I started here I made up my

mind to play it on the level. W hy not? They losetheir money anyhow. I couldn't do anything to quo-tatfons that would make them lose it any faster. I'msatisfied. Maybe you're in this line yourself?"

"Not exactly," said Dreadwind." I don 't quite get you ye t," said Jum per. "But I

know the kind of man you are, and you know all about

this game, don't you?""Som ething," said Dreadwind modestly."W ell, as I see it, it's all righ t," said Jum per. "A s

I say, they will lose the ir money anyhow. They wouldlose it just the same if we sent their orders to Chicagoto be executed regular, like they think we do . The onlydifference would be then that them big Chicago gam-blers, them Dreadwinds and others, would get it. Theydo n't need it and we do . W hen we get it we spendit here in the town. I've just built a house here .T hat 's what I mean. Suppose I sent their orders tothe Chicago Board of Trade instead of sticking themon a spike back of that partition. That money I builta house with would have gone to Chicago, wouldn't it ?As it is it stays here in the community. T hat's better.



62 SATAN 'S BU SH EL

And what difference does it make to them ? N o t a bitof difference. They would lose it anyhow. I'v ethought this all out because Fm honest."

"Do farmers trade with you much?" asked Dread-wind.

"They're my best customers.""And they always lose?""T hat 's what I'm telling you. N ot the farmers

only. I've never seen a man beat the game yet, not in

the long run. All you have to do is keep on with himand you get his money. Maybe you can bea t it. Idon't know. I think maybe you can. T hat 's why Iwas so scared. But the farmers— you were speakingof them— it's funny. They never do but one thing."

"What 's that?""Buy, buy, buy. They don 't know anything else.

Sometimes I feel like saying to them: 'You make it,don't you? You grow it, don 't you? You take all therisk to begin with. Then you come in here and buy itas a gamble.' I don't understand them. If I was afarmer I'd never do anything but sell, if I gambled atall, and I wouldn 't. But tha t would be logical, wouldn'tit ? I feel like telling them sometimes. But I don 't.

[What's the use? They'd lose it anyhow."H e sighed for the foibles of mankind. Dreadwindrose. They shook hands.

"T ha nk s," said Jum per for the last time. " I wasnever wrong about a man yet."

The old man was gone. Dreadw ind had not seenhim go, and he was disappointed, for he meant to have

contact with him. H e strolled about the streets on the



S A T A N ' S B U S H E L 63,

chance of finding him again; but he had vanished, andcasual inquiries w ere of no ava il. " I t ' s a whim only ,"

said D readw ind, "n ot w orth rem em bering." St ill , hedid remember it and kept thinking about it as he pro-ceeded to act on the project that had formed in his mindon leaving the grain elevator .

In the middle of the afternoon you might have seenhim on the highw ay, mad e out in the rig he ha d fur-nished himself w ith in the tow n— sto ut shoes, leggings,

kh ak i tro us ers , a flannel shirt and soft ha t. H e c arrie da stick cut from a wayside hedge and had on his backan arm y knapsack stenciled U . S. A . Peo ple nod dedpleasantly as he passed and he nodded back at themand did not know they turned to stare.

This he placed as one of the high moments of hislife. I envied him . Fa ncy seeing the coun try in th a tw ay for the first t ime — receiving on e's impressions ofof it originally on a fresh negative, through a lens offull power, with nothing expected, nothing familiar,nothing to be taken for granted.

A breeze w as st irr ing. T h e w heat was in gentlem otion. I t seemed always to be running tow ard him,eagerly, excitedly, expectantly, like a friendly dog oncrouched steps w ith its eyes glad and its ears flat. H ewished to pet it , stroke it; he heard himself talking toit . A fte r som e gro pin g he found a w ord for the feel-ing he experienced at th a t m om ent. H e was flooded,he said, w ith a sense of pro fou nd w isdom. P ro -found is m ine. H e said simply wisdom , but with a naccent I can not repro du ce. Tw ice he turn ed back tothe first gr ea t field of w he at. T h e original thrill w as



[64 S A T A N ' S B U S H E L

there. A lm ost he could not bear to part with it. M indyou, I 'm filling in. A man could no t talk that w ay

about his own emotions. Drea dw ind at least could not.What he said was: "Twice I went back to the first fieldof wheat I saw." There he paused in the narrative, satfor a moment in reverie, and then with a little startwent on.

A t each turn or rise in the road he stopped . Oncethere was a sudden view of an old house between two

great trees at the far edge of a field of wheat; beyondthe house was a brook, back of that a rise of groundand then some kind of sky. N oth ing unusual perhaps.It appears to have been such a glimpse as sometimesframes itself in reality, a bit of perfect natural compo-sition that gives one a mysterious sense of self-projec-tion. I am saying this. W h at it reminded him of was

a woodcut of spring in the almanac his mother kept ona nail in her kitchen cupboard. T hat woodcut had re-mained vividly in his mind all these years. A lwayswhen he thought of the country he thought of that. I thad been another wo rld. A nd here it was, that otherworld, in being. H e was walking in it.

When the sun was low he asked for supper at a

farm-house, choosing a small one. T h e farmer, in hisstocking feet, was rocking on the side porch. H av in gadjusted his mind to Dreadwind's request he lookedout over the fields instead of turning toward the opendoor, and called in a loud vo ice: "M aw I Here's a manwants to eat supper w ith us." A long silence; thefarmer motionless, gazing into his fields. Then a

pinched voice from the kitchen: "There ain't much to



S A T A N 'S B U S H E L 6 S

cat. I f he will be satisfied with what I can pick up. I;don't know ." Dread wind 's satisfaction wa s pledg ed.

"W ell, it ain't ready yet," said the pinched voice. "Givehim a chair." A nd whereas until then indoors hadbeen tomblike, now began suddenly a series of prom-issory sounds—the rattle of stove lids, a clangor ofpans, a clicking of dishes, and very soon the sizzle ofmeat falling into hot fat.

"Wheat looks very good," said Dreadwind at a

hazard."Been looking at it myself," said the farmer. "Y ou

can't tell from the road. Som etimes you can't tell untilit's threshed. W hea t you think's fine threshes light..Wheat you think's spindly and light does better,though that ain't so often as like the other way."

"The country looks prosperous," said Dreadwind,

after a dead pause."D oe s it?" said the farmer. "M aybe so .""Isn't it?""That's according to how you look at it," said the

farmer, aggressively crossing his knees the other way.T he seam was open. H e began to complain. H e

complained of the weather, of pests, of a certain man'sluck who thought it was go od m anagement, of the priceof farm implements, of the Government for never do-ing anything, of the trusts that controlled its do-noth-ingness, and of speculators who got all the profit ineverything. Drea dw ind noticed that the barn neededmending. T he windmill, the water trough, the hogfence, the hen shed, the porch floor sagging under therocking chair—they all wanted mending. T he only



06 SATAN'S BUSHEL

mending he could see anywhere had been done to thefarm er's wool socks. A rusty reaper stood under the

apple tree."Maybe he wants to wash," the woman called frominside. She appeared in the door holding out a handbasin. "Supper's most ready," she added.

When they sat down to it the farmer asked theLord's blessing on the food and immediately lost him-self in the partaking of it.

Now the woman began. The re was no fresh meat.Only ham . Nobody was expected to come in likethis at suppertime. T he ham was not as good as itought to be because just as it was ready to come out ofthe smokehouse her mother's cousin who lived in thenext county was seized in the night and they went overto her in haste and were gone three days and the boy

didn 't know enough to take the meat out. Anyway,they hadn 't told him to. But it got smoked too much.If the stranger had come an hour earlier there mighthave been chicken. If it was Saturday there wouldbe fresh bread . If it was Tuesday there would befresh bu tter. And buttermilk. Or maybe he didn 'tlike butterm ilk? Some didn 't who never knew what

it was to get it fresh. The preserves were not sweetenough. Sugar had been so high. The potatoes wereold because the new ones were la te . She might askhim if he would have some eggs except that therewouldn't be any eggs until tomorrow. The last onehad gone to fill out a crate the expressman called for,a day ahead of his regular time, on account of the fact

he was going to be married.



S A T A N ' S B U S H E L 6%

No mat ter . T h e food w as delicious. H a m , creamgravy, fried potatoes, asparagus, buttered beets, pot

cheese, chopped pickles, pears in sirup and coconutcake—delicious and plenty, all but the coffee, which wasplenty only. W hen the meal was over Dreadw indwished to pay a dollar. The woman wanted twenty-five cents. The farmer was not interested. H e seemedembarrassed at this commercial translation of an actof hospitality, and retired to the rocking-chair on the

porch. A quarter it had to be. Dreadwind paid it andtook his leave, conscious at the end of some slight con-stra int on both sides. The woman shook hands withhim as he extended his, but immediately turned herback and began to rattle the dishes. The farm er'sgood-bye from the rocking-chair was a little bit curt.Dreadwind did not understand it.

In the narrative he lingered over this incident.Whether it was that it touched him in some subtle wayhe could not explain or that he needed time for whatwas to come next, I leave you to guess. I t was a newworld, full of strange people, with shy impulses bothtoward and away from one. H is first experiences withthem would be likely to leave a vivid impress. Yet Ira ther think he dwelt on this episode to gain time. Thebeginning of the great romance was only a few milesfarthe r on. H e was coming to it.

Darkness came, seeming to rise out of the ground,and he was still walking, musing, thinking out loud,wondering a little where he should lodge for the night,or whether to sleep in the open air by the roadside,when he caught a twinkling of lights in the foliage



68 SATAN'S BUSHEL

some dis tance ahead; and there was no s ign of a v i l -

lag e . A s he came neare r he hea rd a m an's voice ,

rhetor ical ly pi tc he d; and then a scene un folded . Alawn in front of a farmhouse was dimly l ighted by

lanterns swu ng in the trees . T w en ty m en or m ore

were seated there on chairs and benches, a few on the

por ch s too p in the backgro und. O n a box, under three

lanterns on a horizontal st ick nai led to a tree, stood

the speaker . T h er e we re som e pam phlets at h is feet ,

some under his left arm, one open in his r ight hand.H i s theme w as cooperat ion . H e w as reading from

the l i t erature o f the Amer ican Farm Bureau Federa-

t ion , t h i s :

"Cooperative marketing is the golden rule of agriculture.

The fever and fear are removed from the season of the harvest.

The farmer who is favored by season or seedtime with an early

harvet pools his crop with that of his neighbor. For like qualityand grade of product they receive the same price. The ir crop

moves to market from their common bin in orderly fashion.

There is no surplus bugaboo chasing relentlessly on their heels

and breathing the scorching fire of ruinous prices. Neighbor

joins with neighbor. The y pool their product. They share and

share alike in the new system of economic justice for agriculture.

All this is precisely what the Great Teacher meant when hesaid: 'Therefore, whatsoever ye would that men should do unto

you do ye even so unto them.' "

The speaker cast that pamphlet down and openedanother. H e would deal now with facts. A lreadycooperative associations were marketing more than a

billion dollars* worth of farm produce annually. Tak e



SATAN'S BUSHEL 69

prunes, the perfect example of successful cooperationin marketing. Everybody knew what the prune grow-

ers had done. H ere, of course, the problem waswheat, and there were those who said that what theprune growers had done wheat growers couldn't be-cause wheat was different—that prunes were prunesand wheat was wheat. H e would show them howwrong they were. H e would show them there was nodifference. He was there to tell them that prunes were

wheat and wheat was prunes. H e would prove it.The proof was intricate. Dreadw ind's attention

wandered from the speaker to the audience. H is posi-tion was such that he could see the faces and remainhimself unseen, leaning on the fence, outside the lightedcircle. And there at the far edge of the group , a littleapart, sat his old man— namely, Absalom W eaver. H e

was not alone. Beside him sat a young woman withher two hands in her lap, her eyes fixed on the speaker,her mind apparently in rapt contemplation of the ab-stract idea that wheat was prunes.

How simple it sounds!The re sat a young woman. But what if she were

the only young woman in the world? And when thismanner of thing happens she is. The unsearchablemoment, I suppose, is that in which the man for thefirst time sees all women in one, the eternal symbolembodied and undivided, and conceives a fixation forit. N o other event in life is comparable to this.Everything that ever occurred in the universe musthave occurred precisely as it did through infinite chanceto bring it to pass. And there is the choice of only



Id SATAN'S BUSHEL

one or two commonplace phrases to describe it. H efell in love with her. Yes? W hat does that mean?

At this point of the story he groped, wandered intoirrelevancies, fell into sudden silences. I t seemed liketrying to recall a very old dream. H e was for goingon. I brought him back. W hat did he do ? I wantedto know what he did. H e remembered standing behindher, close enough to have touched her; how he gotthere he could not recall. One will suppose that he

opened the gate with his two hands, went in on his twofeet, walked around the group and stood near her.No one would have been likely to notice him.

It was curious that he should have rememberedsomething that had nothing to do with it. T h a t wasthe speaker's climax. It was th is :

"T he farmer sells and the farmer buys. W hat does

he sell? A primal substance, the food that sustainsthe world. W h at does he buy? Machinery, wagons,building materials, hardware, cloth, sugar, sometimesa piano or a phonograph— such things. W hen he sellsthe primal substance what does he say to the buyer?H e say s: 'H ow much will you give m e? ' But whenhe buys what does he say? H e says: 'How much will

you take ?' Think it over. In every case it is like that :'How much will you give me ?' for what he sells: 'H owmuch will you take?' for what he buys."

At this an assenting, brooding murmur went throughthe crowd. Until then it had listened in a stolid man-ner. Now the speaker, who was an organ izer for astate-wide cooperative marketing association, began to

solicit signatures, passing the printed blanks around.



SATAN'S BU SH EL 71

A voice was lifted up, calling, "Weaver 1"The old man did not stir. H e sat with his hands

clasped around an upraised knee. Other voices tookup his name, calling: "Ab! . . . Weaver! . . . Ab-salom W eave r! W ha t about it ?"

Respect and familiarity were mingled in thesevoices; and as they kept insisting the old man slowlyarose.

"Sign," he said. "G o on and sign. I t will be edu-

cating. Each generation must learn for itself andwhen it has learned it is ready to die."

W ith tha t he sat down. It was not enough. Theycontinued to call upon him. H e arose again and sa id:

"Luke, eighteenth chapter, twenty-second verse:'Sell all tha t thou hast and follow me.' T hat is thesublime thought for cooperative marketing. I com-

mend it to you. It works. But it works in heaven.Don't let anybody tell you it will pay on earth."

And a second time he sat down. The ir demand be-came explicit. They sa id: "Preach us a sermon."And when it was irresistible he got up and walked tothe place under the three lanterns. H e did not standon the box.

Dreadwind remembered distinctly that now he satdown beside the young woman and spoke to her.

"Is that your father?" he asked."Yes," she said; and looked at him with surprise.

It was clear that she was surprised, not at having beenspoken to by a stranger, for as to that she was quiteindifferent, but that anyone should have asked thatquestion.



7 2 S A T A N 'S B U S H E L

"What is your name?" he asked.

•'Cordelia," she answered without looking at him

again. H er gaze followed her father. H e had notyet begun to speak, but was peering about in the grass,stooping here and there to pluck a bit of vegetation.He walked as far as the fence for a bramble leaf. Re-turning he snapped a twig from the elm above his headand faced them.

"T his natural elm," he began, with an adm iring loo k

at the tree, "was once a tiny thing. A sheep mighthav e eaten it at one bite. Ev ery living thing aroundit was hostile and injurious. A nd it survived. I tgrew . I t took its profit. I t became tall and pow erfulbeyond the reach of enemies. W hat preserved it—cooperative marketing? W ha t gave it pow er— a lawfrom Congress? W ha t gave it fullness— the G olden

Rule ? On what was its strength founded—a fraternalspirit? Yo u know better. Yo ur instincts tell you no .It saved itself. I t found its own greatness. H o w ?By fighting. D id you know that plants fight? I f onlyyou could see the deadly, ceaseless warfare amongplants this love ly landscape wou ld terrify you. I twou ld make you think m an's struggles tame. I w ill

show you some glimpses of it."I hold up this leaf from the elm. T he reason it is

flat and thin is that the peaceable work of its life is togath er nourishment for the tree from the air. The re-fore it must have as much surface as possible to touchthe air with. But it has another work to do . A grislywork. A natural work all the same. I t must fight.

For that use it is pointed at the end as you see and has



SATAN'S BU SHE L 73

teeth around the edge— these. The first thing the elmplan t does is to grow straigh t up out of the ground with

a spear thrust, its leaves rolled tightly together. Itsenemies do not notice it. Then suddenly each leafspreads itself out and with its teeth attacks otherplants; it overturns them, holds them out of the sun-light, drowns them. And this is the tr ee ! D o youwonder why the elm plant does not overrun the earth?Because other plants fight back, each in its own way.

I show you a blade of grass. It has no teeth. H owcan it fight? Perhaps it lives by love and sweetness.I t does no t. It grows very fast by stealth, taking up solittle room that nothing else minds, until all at once itis tall and strong enough to throw out blades in everydirection and fall upon other plants. It smothers themto death. Th en the bramble. I care no t for the

bramble. N o t because it fights. F or another reason.H ere is its weapon. Besides the spear point and theteeth the bramble leaf you see is in five pa rts, like one'shan d. I t is a hand in fact, and one very ha rd to castoff. W hen it cannot overthrow and kill an enemy asthe elm does, it climbs up his back to light and air, andin fact prefers that opportunity, gaining its profit not

in natural combat but in shrewd advantage, like themiddleman. Another plant I would like to show you.The re is one near by. Unfortunately it would be in-convenient to exhibit him in these circumstances. H isfamiliar name is honeysuckle. H e is sleek, suave, bril-liantly arrayed, and you would not suspect his nature,which is that of the preying speculator. Once you are

in his toils it is hopeless. If you have not drowned



74 SATAN'S BUSHEL

or smothered him at first he will get you. The way ofthis plant is to twist itself round and round another

and strangle it."T his awful strife is universal in plan t life. Thereare no exemptions. Am ong animals it is not so fierce.Th ey can run from one ano ther. Plants must fightit out where they stand . They must live or die on thespot. Am ong plants of one kind there is rivalry. Theweak fall out and die ; the be tter survive. T h at is the

principle of na tural selection. But all plan ts of onekind fight alike against plan ts of all other kinds. T ha tis the law of their strength. None is helped but whofirst helps himself. A race of plants that had wastedits time waiting for Congress to give it light and air,or for a state bureau with hired agents to organize itby "the Golden Rule, or had been persuaded that its

interests were in common with those of the consumer,would have disappeared from the earth.

"T he farmer is like a plan t. H e cannot run. H e isrooted . H e shall live or die on the spot. But thereis no plant like a farmer. There are nobles, ruffians,drudges, drones, harlots, speculators, bankers, thievesand scalawags, all these among plants, but no idiots,

saying, 'How much will you give ?' and 'What will youtake?' Until you fight as the elm fights, take as theelm takes, think as the elm thinks, you will never bepowerful and cannot be wise."



C H A P T E R I V

W EA VER stopped. Th e state bureau's organizertried to speak again and got somewhat excited in

the futility of the effort. Everybody was up and mov-ing about, with no more attention for him. H e did at

length impound an audience of four calm and wordlessminds unable to say either yes or no or to get awayfrom him. The rest coalesced in groups of two andthree, some to depart at once, others to exchange newsand information of the countryside. There were cries:"Good night. . . . Wait a minute. . . . Take Annwith you. ,. . . W e're going too . . . . H ow 's

mother?"Weaver spoke to no one, nor did anyone speak to

him. H e was as a bishop among them, not to bespoken to unless he wished it; also it was apparent tha the troubled their minds. They were eager to hear himand then never knew what to do with what he said.He walked straight from under the three lanterns to-

ward his daughter, looking neither right nor left, butonly at her . She rose to meet him. H e took her armand they walked away together. Dreadwind followedthem . The moon had come up. One could see clearlyin the road . After having followed them at a distancefor some time he quickened his steps to overtake them.

"May I walk with you a bit?" he asked, coming be-side the girl.

75




"That ye walk not as other Gentiles," said Weaver."Walk about Zion, go round about her."

Dreadwind took the hint and came around to theold man's side."This is the third time I've seen you today," he

said."T w ice," said the old man sharply. "Tw ice. M ind

what you say."And Dreadwind took another hint, which was that

Weaver wished his appearance in the bucket shop notto be mentioned.

"I heard what you said to them just now," he said—Dr ead win d said. "I w as particularly interested," headded, "in that part of your parable about the honey-suckle."

"You might be," said Weaver.

This was unexpected and not to be digested in amoment. T he pause became awkward and it was lef tto Dreadwind to end it.

"My name is Dreadwind," he said, unable to thinkof anything better.

"I know w ho you are," said the old man."And your name is Weaver?" said Dreadwind,

rather vacantly."Everybody knows that," the old man retorted.Just then Dreadwind caught a glance from the girl.

In it he read, or thought he read, both mild surpriseat his pertinacity and a sign not to mind her father'scurtness. A t any rate, if he needed encouragem ent,which is doubtful, he was encouraged to go on.

"And that part about the elm tree," he continued.



SATAN'S BU SH EL 77

"The illustration itself was perfectly clear until youseemed to turn it against the idea of cooperation. D o

not the leaves of the elm cooperate ?"This was a challenge to the old man's mind and hismanner somewhat relented.

"A tree is a community," he said, ua complex societyof many different parts, separately acting, all governedby one spirit which we call an instinct. The leaves,do you say, cooperate for the preservation of the

whole? T hat is in seeming only. Each leaf striveswith all its might to take care of itself alone, and it isso ordered that the result of this shall be the good ofthe tree . The leaves themselves know nothing aboutit. W hat each leaf does for itself is good for the tree,but no leaf ever stops to think of that . It thinks onlyof itself. And because all the leaves think alike they

appear to cooperate. C all it cooperation if you like.But will you say that elms as elms cooperate? Theyhave no common bin; they do not share and sharealike; they have no sick religion of equality. Theycontend with each other for advantage. W hat theyhave in common is an instinct—one way of fightingagainst all other plants. T hat is what the farmer

needs. If farmers, like elm trees, had a common fight-ing instinct, then every individual selfishly attending tohis own profit would be working for the good of therace without thinking of it and cooperation would bewhat it is and should be—namely, a natural means andnot an end to which you shall need to be exhorted. I twould simply occur. W hat they tell the farmer is that

cooperation is a golden end. H a 1 What would they



78 SATAN'S BU SH EL

accomplish ? Elm would share with elm that all mightbe lean alike."

"What would you do?" Dreadwind asked."N oth ing ," W eaver answered. "D o nothing. It

amuses me to torment the place where their mindsought to be. The farmer has the stomach of the worldin his hands and cannot make it pay. Instead hedrudges for it. H e is a slave vegetable without anybrains at all. . . . Good night."

The two turned abruptly out of the road and passedthrou gh a ga te. Dreadwind stood alone in the moon-light, thinking of what you may guess. C ertainly notof cooperative marketing . The girl had looked at himonly that one time and was afterward apparently una-ware of his existence.

H e was weary from walking. N ot a great distance

on he saw a straw stack close by the road and pitchedhis bed there; which is to say, he cast himself down inthe straw and fell asleep.

He dreamed a honeysuckle had him by the neck andsmothered him with its flowers; and it was not at alldisagreeable. Very decidedly otherwise, in fact, ex-cept that the edges of its leaves were sharp and pricked

his face. There was some baffling circumstance in thecase. It seemed there was a hostile tree tha t forbadehim to touch the honeysuckle vine, as he longed to do;and he never knew what might have happened, for hecame awake with a start, as if he had heard voices.Daw n was breaking. H e sat up and looked around,slowly reconstructing the realities, and heard the voices

again. Th is time there was no doubt of it. Th ey



SATAN 'S BU SH EL 79

were near, just around the straw stack, and comingnearer.

W eaver and C ordelia appeared. Not in the leastastonished at the sight of a man sitting on the edge ofthat kind of bed, they deflected their steps and meantto pass him without speaking. I t occurred to Dread -wind to wonder why Weaver, knowing who he was,showed no curiosity about him. For a man to be foundsleeping in a straw stack might be common enough; but

not a man like himself.

"Good morning," he said, as they were going by.They stopped. The girl regarded him frankly but

did not speak. A shade of annoyance crossed the oldman's face. It was no more than a shade. H e wasapparently in better humor.

"Good enough if it lasts," he said."May I walk with you again?" Dreadwind said.Weaver regarded him thoughtfully and did not re-

ply directly. " I was rough last night," he said. " Iwas made to think of it afterward. I was chided forit."

Dreadw ind glanced at Cordelia. She was looking

away."W e're not walking," W eaver added. "W e've cometo a wedding."

"A t daw n!" said Dreadwind. "A wedding atdawn?"

"Why not a wedding at dawn, sir?" said Weaver."T he time is perfect." H e hesitated. " I t isn't private.

Anyone may come who knows how to see it. If youdon't know I'll show you."



80 SATAN'S BU SH EL

Dreadw ind rose and went with them. Th ey crossedthe road and entered the edge of a wheat field. The re

.Weaver stopped and his hands began slowly to goapart in a gesture of benediction as he contemplatedthe wimpling wheat in the strained light of early morn-ing. H e spoke of it, or to it, in apostrophe. uO h,lucid w he at!" he said. "M an 's friendly nourishment,multiplying to his want, proudly fawning at his feet."

He stood for some time in this attitude with a rapt

expression."It seems always to be running toward one," said

Dreadwind." H a ! " exclaimed the old man, looking at him quick-

ly. "You see th a t? ""I see it," said Dreadwind, "and yet I do not under-

stand it. I've been thinking it was an illusion."

"I 'll tell you why," said W eaver. "W heat is tame.I t does not fight. M an fights the ba ttle for it, andwhat you see is gratitude."

"I don't quite see yet," said Dreadwind."Reflect," said W eaver. "W hat was wild wheat

like? I t was a scrawny grass. You would not knowit for kin to this . I t had to fight. H alf its strength

went out in strife. Then man made a bargain with it.If it would devote itself to him and multiply with allits strength according to his needs he would guard itfrom its enemies, fix it in security and peace, give it apriva te garden for its nuptials. Trus ting man it putaside its weapons; and this is now so long ago it hasprobably forgotten how to fight. W h at if man's pro-

tection failed? W ould it not become a scrawny grass



SATAN'S BU SH EL 81

again or more likely perish alto gether? Its life is inman's keeping. And for the bread that stays him here

man relies upon the ceremony we shall witness, somysterious that no one understands it, so obscure thatfew have ever seen it."

"I'v e seen it," said M oberly. "H e' s right, though.

I don 't know a dozen men that have. It 's the flower-ing of the wheat."

Th is wheat pit autom aton! H e knew. H e hadseen it. The recollection of it stirred him suddenly.My dislike for him remained constant as a quantity;only now it began to be balanced by another feeling.The others were as much astonished at him as I was.

W e eased ourselves around. Goran ordered up somerefreshments, Selkirk more cigarettes, and I went onwith the story.

Weaver's last few words, I resumed, were spokenwith divided attention. H e had already begun to

examine the wheat stalks, one here, another there, tak-ing care not to hurt or trample them.

Dreadwind and the girl waited and watched him;and he was some distance from them when he fell onhis knees, verified his discovery through a magnifyingglass and called them to come. Th ey also knelt, tobring their vision into the plane of his.

Can you see it ? The three of them kneeling before




a wheat stalk there in the daw n?— the male principlein its two aspects, one blindly pursuing, one defending

what it could not possess, the maid between them,all kneeling to observe a microscopic drama in thewheat bud, unaware of the greater drama passing inthemselves? Or which is greater? There is perhapsno scale to infinity. Less and greater may be tricks ofthe finite lens.

The old man offered the glass impersonally, holding

it out behind him, without taking his eyes from thewheat stalk. Dreadwind made a gesture to mean tha tCordelia should look first. At that she took the glassfrom her fathe r's hand and put it in his. In the actshe looked at him, shaking her head. W hat her eyessaid w as : "I 've seen it many times. You look." Shemight as well have said it out loud. The old man was

oblivious. How ever, she didn't say it out loud. Shesaid it the other way. And this slight business aside,between themselves, was amazing sweet to Dreadwind.It was a complete episode, miraculous, creative, withstructural proportions, and yet more fragile than acobweb, so that if one dared to challenge it, or to touchit, instantly it turned to nothingness.

Well, the old man never knew which one of them itwas looked first, nor that Cordelia knelt there throughforty minutes without moving, except to shake herhead each time Dreadwind offered her the glass. Sheknelt there like a saint at vespers, her weight inclinedslightly backward, her hands clasped in front of her,regarding the two aspects of the male principle with

that eternal knowledge which is pure innocence.



SATAN'S BU SH EL 83

W eaver was talking. On a spikelet of the wheatstem he indicated a small, greenish swelling.

"T hat is the church," he said. "W e are at the doorof the conventicle. In a few minutes it will slowly openand three weary cupids will come out on the steps to

rest."He chuckled."Why to rest?" Dreadwind asked."T o rest," the old man repeated. "You will under-

stand when I tell you what is going on inside. A t thevery bottom of this little swelling lies the egg. T heinfinite concavity. The devouring mother principle.The egg is not yet the mother. Every mother is firsta bride . This bride is very modest. N ot shy, onlymodest. All that she reveals of herself are two lovelyplumes, growing tall and straight inside the bud.

Around these plumes and growing very much fasterare the three cupids I speak of, whom you shall seewhen their prank is played. Each of these cupids bearsaloft an innumerable number of bridegrooms—I don'tknow how many— all blindfolded. Now there comesa moment—see! it is happening—the sign is when thedoor comes a little ajar—a moment when the plumes

spread out, and the cupids, standing higher than theplumes, hurl the bridegrooms down. They fall uponthose spreading plumes. The bridegrooms are thepollen grains— millions and millions of them. Andout of all that number the bride will select one. Shedoes not do this at once. The re is first a struggle.She requires it. All those bridegroom s must seek her.

They must grow down to her. I t becomes a terrific



84 SATAN'S BU SH EL

dram a. They alternately unite to perform prodigiousengineering feats in order to reach her and then engage

in combat each one for himself. One succeeds. Oneshe receives. The re st? W hat becomes of those whomshe rejects? I t does not m atte r. They are wasted inNature 's own way. I t is so. In every piece of life itis so. M illions of surplus bridegrooms are createdonly to make sure that the bride in her leisure shall t>eable to choose one. . . . There! . . . See!"

The bud was slowly bursting. W hat had been atfirst an ovoid, greenish swelling now was opening intopetals at the top; and out from between the petals asthey opened came what Weaver called the cupids andwhat botanists call the anthers— one, then another,then another, looking, as the old man had predicted,very weary and perhaps a little bored, from the task

of hurling millions of enterprising bridegrooms intothe tentative, plumelike embrace of an invisible andfastidious bride who should in her own time chooseone. They lay there, the three cupids, sort of hangingout, with their heads in their hands, saying plainly theceremony was over.

"The honeymoon comes afterward," said Weaver.

"Nobody may see that."They all stood up. Dreadwind looked around and

was surprised to see that the appearance of the wheathad wonderfully changed. Then he realized tha t whathe had been watching on one stalk had been takingplace everywhere at the same time. The whole fieldwas in flower.

As they came back to the road Weaver's manner of



SATAN'S BU SH EL 85

a sudden changed for the worse. Dreadwind walkedat C ordelia's side. T hat may have been it. Several

attempts on Dreadwind's part to make conversationthe old man rebuffed either by silence or a sultry excla-mation. When they came to the gate where father anddaughter had turned in the night before they turnedagain in the same way, with this difference, that the oldman did not speak and the girl looked back.

Dreadwind began to search the circumstances forsome pretex t on which to continue seeing them. N otthem of course, but one of them. And the questionwas not whether he should see her again, or why; itwas only how. The impulse tha t had brought him tothe wheat fields was off the track, ditched, abandonedupside down. A different locomotive now was pullinghis train . By the same road he had come he walkedback to the town, and saw only as much of the land-scape as his feet touched, and that dimly. W hat he didin the town was to buy an automobile out of a dealer'swindow and spend the afternoon learning to drive it.Then he clothed himself to new purpose, drove in theevening to the house wherte they were, walked up thedoor and asked for them—for Weaver.

And they were gone. She was gone!Their going, he was told, had nothing strange about

it ; that was their whimsical way. They would comewith one wind and go with another. Nevertheless, itwas sudden. Yes, a little more so than usual. N o,they did not say where they were going. Th ey neverdid say. Right after dinner, the midday meal in thecountry, they calmly departed. A t first Dreadw ind



86 SATAN'S BUS HE L

suspected that the woman who stood in the doorwaytelling him this was evasive. As he became convinced

of her sincerity he was bewildered."Have you known them long?" the woman asked.Dreadwind said he hadn't, but did not disclose how

very slight his acquaintance with them was."Then you wou ldn't know ," said the woman. "They

appear and disappear that way, like migratory birds,as my mother said, only of course it's strange— the two

of them so. As long as we've lived here, it's now go-ing on eight years, they've come every year. Theynever stopped with us before. I don't mean wewouldn't be glad to have them again."

"How do they live ?" Dreadwind asked."By this and that and what the Lo rd provides," said

the woman. "Anyone is glad to have them, as I say,especially if it's about harvest time. The girl helps in-doors. H im ? You'd have to ask the men what hedoes. I can 't exactly say. I t' s what he knows, Ireckon. Once I heard him preach a funeral. N at-urally he would get something for tha t. H e can cureanimals, they say, and take spells off."

She stopped and began to regard Dreadwind in aquizzical manner, with some slyness in it.

"I don't think you'll find them," she said."Why not.""So many roads going every which way," she said."That isn't what you meant," said Dreadwind.

"Why do you think I won't find them?"

"W ell, maybe you can," she said, of the first opinion



SATAN'S BUSHEL 87

still. "I'd certainly tell you how if I knew myself.

He's very suspicious."

"Of whom?" asked Dreadwind."I'm sure I don't know," said the woman, pretend-

ing to be perfectly blank.She knew the direction in which they had walked

away. And tha t was all. Dreadw ind thanked her andwas halfway to the gate when the woman called to himas if she had forgotten something.

"Was she expecting you to ask for her?""I don't know," Dreadwind replied."Because you didn't ask for her, did you?" the

woman continued. "You asked for him. She said ifanybody asked for her to give them this."

She held out an envelope."Thank you," said Dreadwind, taking it. The enve-

lope was sealed, but had no writing on it. Afterw ardit occurred to him that his claim to it had not beenproved, not even asserted more so than by the act ofreaching for it, and he wondered why the woman hadmade not the slightest difficulty about giving it to him.

A mile from the house he broke it open, and out ofit fell a wheat spikelet in flower. There was nothing

else.



CHAPTER V

TN the direction they had gone he drove to the•*• first crossroad and turned right. After many milesin vain that way he came back to the point at which hehad turned right, and turned left. Returning again he

drove straight ahead to the next crossroad and wentfirst right and then left. In this manner he searchedthe country methodically. Nobody had seen them.They had passed without trace if they passed at all.

Thus a fortnight had elapsed when one morningDreadwind's quest was almost rewarded and thenimmediately disappointed again in a very singular

manner.He had spent the latter part of the night in the auto-

mobile, a little off the road, in a space screened on threesides by a high wild hedge. H e came awake as streaksof light began to show in the east. For several mo-ments he lay motionless, observing the sky. Suddenlyin a spectral manner a tall, lone figure appeared in the

road. H e recognized it instantly as W ea ver ; and evenin that dim light he could see that the old man was inextreme trouble with his thoughts. H e would sta rt,stop, turn, walk up and down, and kept twisting hishands together. Then he seemed to have resolved it,for suddenly he left the road, leaped the ditch, andstood in the edge of a field of wheat. From Dread-

wind's angle of vision he was in silhouette above the



SATAN'S BU SH EL 89

wheat and so exaggerated in stature that he seemedsupernaturally tall, touching the sky. The whole omen

of him was evil. Dreadwind had a flash of phantasy.He though of Abraham about to sacrifice his son, andshuddered.

W hat happened next was mysterious. Out of thedepths of an inner garment the old man produced as itwere a pouch or small sack, opened it, dipped his fin-gers therein and appeared to be casting an impalpable

substance on the air. The re was a fresh breeze blow-ing against the wheat and that of course would accountin a natural way for what Dreadwind at this momentobserved with a superstitious feeling—namely, thatthe wheat seemed to be running from Weaver, nottoward him. Although he took rational note of theobvious physical explanation, still he could do nothing

with the fancy that it was running from the old manin terror.

After Weaver had several times repeated the act ofsowing something on the air, Dreadwind's curiositymoved him. H e rose and approached. W eav erneither saw nor heard him. W ith only the ditch be-tween them Dreadwind stopped and called his name.

The old man turned his face— only his face. It sexpression was so calamitous, so mingled of pity, painand cruel resolve, that D readw ind was shocked. Be-fore he could speak again, Weaver dropped the pouchand went stumbling away through the wheat, tramplingit in a heedless manner and never once looked back.His walking down the wheat in that way, as if it were

nonexistent or lifeless, so contrary to the feeling of



90 SATAN'S BUSHEL

tenderness hitherto revealed, was a sight tha t unnervedDreadw ind. H e said it was like an act of murder un-

consciously committed. W hen he had so far recoveredas to be able to act the old man was invisible.

The first thing he did was to pick up the abandonedpouch. It was still half full of some fine, brownishstuff with a sick, unpleasant odor. H e put this away inhis pocket and then went about the neighborhood lei-surely, making no inquiries at first, expecting to come

upon W eaver and C ordelia in a casual manner. H eimagined that W eaver had not recognized him. Therehad been no sign of recognition in that extraordinaryexpression; and this was all the more probable fromthe fact that one of Weaver's peculiarities was a mor-bid longsightedness. W hen he was in a state of feel-ing his eyes focused slowly and with difficulty upon

near-by objects.But not only was there no trace of either Weaver or

Cordelia in the immediate vicinity; there was not ahouse within a radius of many miles where they hadbeen seen. Dreadw ind was disagreeably astonished.Elusiveness in this degree was adroit, not accidental.Forebodings assailed him. H e began to have ugly

thoughts about Weaver.And now it occurred to him to work backward. The

woman who had delivered Cordelia's mute token mightknow with whom they had stopped before coming toher. If she did, then in the same way others might beable to refer him back, and so he would go from oneplace to another until he had discovered their source.

Thus he came again to the house where all the be-



SATAN'S BU SHE L 91

ginning was, and knocked—as by this time he hadlearned to do— at the kitchen door. Th e woman's

name was Purdy . She was not surprised to see himand seemed to be indulgently amused."I knew you wouldn't find them," she said before

Dreadwind had spoken.N o. She had no news of them. They had not been

back."Do you know where they were before coming

here?" Dreadwind asked."That won't do you any good," she said.She had been making bread . There was dough on

her hands. She gathered it into a little ball and rolledit thoughtfully between her palms.

"Perhaps no t," said Dreadw ind. "You 've been rightso far, I'm sorry to say. Ho wever, I'd like to try."

She gave him the name of a family in the nextcounty, together with explicit directions about the wayto go, twice repeated.

"Now be sure you don't get lost," she called afterhim. H e turned to thank her again. "And stop againif you are passing this way," she added.

H e found the place. The migrants had passed four

days there, and to one side of the house it was a sorem atter. The woman lost her temper at the mentionof Weaver's name and denounced him for a witch. Shewas more voluble than coherent. Presently her hus-band appeared, put her aside and stood himself in thewhole doorway. H e wished to talk of womankind forlistening womankind's benefit. Dreadwind wished only

to know where the Weavers had been before this.



92 SATAN'S BUSHEL

Gradually the man admitted the probability that theymight have been with a family twelve miles south.Dreadwind was departing with this information. The

man followed him to the gate and there created a man-to-man atmosphere, with no annotating female in thebackground.

Dreadwind, he said, would know what he meant.Women were not such as had judgment into them.They put on everything a man said and wore it hardaround the house whether it was intended that way orno t. W eaver was all right, only sometimes he had astrong way of saying things and it wasn't everybodyknew how to take it.

Dreadwind asked what he had been saying here tojeopardize his welcome on the feminine side.

Things there wasn't anything into really, the mansaid. Things nobody would notice unless they put themon like women always done. Such as one morning a tbreakfast the woman said she dreamed of the deviland Weaver said you dreamed of the devil when youlet the dishwater stand. There was nothing into that,was the re? How did he know she let her dishwaterstand? But the woman got mad and let herself go .W ell, things like that . If you had short fingernailsyou was a tale bearer. If you kicked up your dressbehind you was a thief. M aybe, maybe not. Youwould see many things that was both so and not so.What was so of a field might not be so of a furrow.Anyhow, it wasn't meant personal, like the womantook it, not even about the hair. H e said if birds madea nest of your hair you went crazy. So ever since the



SATAN'S BU SHE L 9^

woman was going about the place knocking birds' nestsout of the trees and raking the grass for bits of herhair that might have blowed out of the house, thinkingthe old man put a spell on her mind. But as for himbeing a witch, it was like them inquisitors calling every-body heretics and burning them up because theycouldn't understand what they said. Suppose he couldtalk with dumb animals, like he said. W asn't tha t onaccount of him being born C hristmas ? And if he couldread cobwebs and tell what the rest of the winter wasgoing to be according to how the liver and spleen waspointed in a fresh-killed hog, that was knowledge.Whatever you might say it came out that way.

"Juknow," the man asked, eyeing Dreadwind keenly— "juknow why you never seen a blue jay on Fridayand why on the first Thursday in July at two o'clock

all the toads turn pink for thirty minutes?""Why?" said Dreadwind."Ask him," the man answered.W ith tha t he was through. H e became suddenly

apprehensive. T o further questions he returned eva-sive, suspicious monosyllables. Dreadwind offered toshake hand s. The man hastily popped out of the gate.

"Never shake hands over a gate," he said.At the next place, twelve miles south, there was atidy woman who never let her dishwater stand and wascareful of her ha ir. She had liked C ordelia and feltvery sorry for her on the ground that in being so de-voted to that old curmudgeon of a father she wasthrowing her life away. I t seemed hardly natural, and

such a lovely girl too. However, she said nothing



94 SATAN'S BU SH EL

against W eaver directly. H er husband smiled vaguely,a little uneasily, at some secret recollection of the oldman, saying: "H e 's a character all righ t." Dread-

wind said he had been told that Weaver was a kind ofwitch who worked upon people's superstitions.

"Yes," said the man. "H e might do t h a t Butyou'll see the re's generally some point to it. The reare people you can't get at in any other way for theirown good. There's a man near here tha t never fedhis stock properly . W eaver told him at twelve o'clockChristmas Eve cows kneel down and talk with the devilin the language of the Old Testament and complain ifthey haven 't been used right. And tha t was the reasonhe had been having bad luck. The man believed it.Weaver nailed two brooms in a cross on the barn—youcan see them as you go by—and said they would keep

evil spirits away as long as the cows got enough to eat.And he believed tha t. I t was good for the cows.What's more, the man's having better luck."

"Anything else?" Dreadwind asked."He can find water with a peach twig," said the

man. " I never took any stock in that myself until Isaw him do it right here on this place."

In that way and from place to place Dreadwind gota lot of information he was not seeking, all of it in-teresting, and nothing to the main point. Nobodyknew who Weaver was nor how it happened that hecame to be wandering over the wheat country yearafter year with a beautiful daughter attached. The irtrail was easy to follow in this backward fashion until

Jt jumped off the earth in Texas. I t appeared to have



SATAN'S BU SH EL 95

started there, not once but several times, for peopleremembered their coming again and again; only here

nobody knew whence they came or where they.had beenlast. H ere was their point of departure, it seemed,but not their source; and Dreadwind was more mysti-fied than ever.

He had been three times to see a family that wassaid to have known the Weavers in a time long past.The last member of the family had now denied it. The

clew was therefore false and Dreadwind was leavingit.

Outside the gate in the shade of an ash tree, on alittle bench, sat a man who had long since ceased toobserve the world or mind its vanities. H e had cutit off. H is hands were folded, his knees lay toge ther,his toes turned in, and the long, wonderful beard that

had absorbed his masculinity was tucked into his shirtbosom. H e seemed very little, very old and whollyimpenetrable. Dreadwind had noticed him before,always in that place on the bench, remote and unsee-ing. You could imagine that without power, authorityor grandeur of any sort he lived there among hisprogeny, begotten of himself and a strong woman, and

derived his dignity from the one phenomenon of ven-erable silence; also that he took a great deal of ironicpleasure in it.

"I don't suppose you knew Absalom Weaver?" saidDreadwind, more out of curiosity to see how he wouldreact when directly provoked than with any sort ofexpectation.

The patriarchal deposit did not stir. One could not



96 SATAN'S BU SHE L

believe that anything within it stirred . Dreadw indstood looking down at it for a minute, then turned

away and had one foot on the running board of hiscar when a far-away voice at the pitch of an unoiledhinge arrested him. The bearded figure had u tteredwords. Dreadw ind asked him what they were. Aftera long time he repeated them.

"Ye can suppose it," he said."Well, do you?" Dreadwind asked.

"Better nor he knew himself," was the answer whenat length it came.

Dreadwind sat down on the grass, facing the mo-tionless figure, and gave the impulse plenty of time toaugment itself.

"What made him a vagabond?" he asked."If you ask him why he don't own any land—if you

ask him— do you know w hat he will say ?""What will he say?" asked Dreadwind."H e will say he ain't fit to own land. And he ain 't

•fit.""Why will he say that?" asked Dreadwind." I told him. I told him he were not fit to own

land . And he ain 't the one to forget it ."

It was an afternoon's work, requiring much subtletyand patience, to mine that dry cavern of its treasure.Each fragment was pa rted with reluctantly. And itwas a plain story, deserving to be briefly told.



CHAPTER VI

^X7*EAVER, as one might have guessed, was once* * a farmer on his own land. H e was a good far-

mer. N o trouble there. H e was industrious andfar-seeing. N o trouble yet. But he had a gamblingmania. W hat he gained by farming he lost in thenearest bucket shop. H e gambled in wheat. Neveranything else. This went on for years. The maniagrew. H is betting losses in tha t phantom wheat on theblackboard began to be more than all the profit he

could win from the soil; and the farm itself becameinvolved in debt. Each time a new mortgage wasnecessary to pay up his losses and avoid a lawsuit thecruelties of the domestic scene were greater . You cansee it. A woman in the role of marty r, taking ad-vantage of a just grievance to balance off all pettyscores, as almost any woman will. C hildren bewil-

dered at first and then beginning to take sides. Aproud and willful man who must storm it through tosave his own ego and authority.

The woman said that he promised each time to stop.Almost for certain he never did. H e wasn't one whowould, nor one who, if he had, would have defaultedon his word; and yet, of course, a woman in these

circumstances, saying each time she would never sign97



98 SATAN'S BUSHEL

again, could not be expected clearly to see the differencebetween an ultimatum and a covenant. She under-

stood he would cease gambling. H ow could he go onif she meant what she said and would never sign again ?But that was an understanding arrived at in her mindalone. Anyone who knows a gambler, one in whomthe passion is deep, can imagine what he was thinking.It would not be necessary for her to sign another mort-gage. He would beat the phantom wheat game and

clear the farm of debt. W hat ruins the gambler is notill luck. I t is counting on the future to pay for thepast.

The sequel is foreseen. This little effigy of a patri-arch with his beard flowing into his bosom like a lostriver was at that time an intimate friend of the family—one who understood everything, one in whom the

wife confided, one who meddled when he dared andstill bore the scars of W eave r's scorn. H e was therethis night, hot with the news he had got in town.W eaver at last had lost the farm. Th ere had been asudden fa ll in the price of wheat. I t wiped him out.What was worse, he owed the bucket shop so muchthat even what was left of the farm would not satisfy

the debt. The re would be a dead horse to pay for.Therefore, the friend argued, it would be better nowfor the two boys to come forward and take charge ofthe family's future. They could no t be sued for thefather's deb t. W ith all his wisdom he persuaded thewife to this line of conduct and admonished her to befirm. W hen he ceased speaking, having said every-

thing three times, the little clock on a bracket shelf



SATAN'S BUSHEL 99

against the wall took up his exhortation. It was alittle out of plumb, with an injured tick, and kept say-ing : "Be firm, be firm, be firm!'

It was a winter night. Snow was falling. They satin the kitchen—the sympathetic friend, the wife andfour children. The chores were all done. A lanternon the floor by the door had not quite gone out andwas fuming. Supper was over, except W eaver's , andhis was on a plate in the oven. It had been kept w armfor so long that it was already spoiled, and no oneminded it any more. The wife's arms lay limp on thered tablecloth in the round shadow of the hanging coal-oil lamp. At the slightest unexpected sound she wouldstart, take in her breath, then let it out again in aweary, reconciled sigh. The kind of a woman whosecretly enjoys misery and aggrievedness because shecan so easily dramatize it. A girl of sixteen was clear-ing up. She had to walk around two boys, almostgrown, who surrounded the stove; and she did itwithout speaking.

A much younger girl stood alone at the windowlooking out. I t was she who spoke and her voice was

bright."T he re he is," she said. "I see him."The wife swallowed, twitched the corners of her

mouth, and looked at the family's friend, who silentlyrepeated the admonition, "Be firm." The child at thewindow continued to look out. The others listened.They heard him drive in and open the barn door.

Neither of the two boys stirred. A few minutes la terthey heard him close the barn door and began to




hearken for his step on the back porch. I t did notcome.

"What's he doing?" the wife asked, speaking to thegirl in the window.

"Walking around," she answered, not turning herface. Her voice had changed.

Several minutes passed in silence."Now what's he doing?" the wife asked.Instead of answering the girl threw her arm across

her face, leaned against the window frame and beganto sob.

"O h, that child!" the mother sighed. "Stella, dolook. See what he's doing ."

Stella was wiping a pla te. She approached thewindow obliquely, intending to glance out in passing.What she saw caused her to stop and look again and

then to stand gazing. The hand that was drying theplate went slower and slower round and stopped.Then she turned from the window, shaking her head,frowning.

"I don't know what he's doing." she said."Can you see him?""Yes."

"Well, then, what does he seem to be doing?""He seems to be hugging the trees," said Stella."O h, de ar! Oh, de ar!" the mother aspirated.

'T h a t ' s it. Th at 's i t.""What's it, mother?" Stella asked in a petulant

voice."H ush, child. Don 't ask me. W ill that young one

stop her crying?"




Just then Weaver's steps were heard on the porch.The doorlatch clicked. H e paused on the thresholdand looked around him, at each of them in turn, at theroom, at the familiar objects in it, as if he were try-ing to remember something. Then he picked up thefuming lantern, put it out and set it on the floor again.Forgetting to close the door or to remove his hat andouter coat he walked mechanically to the oven anddrew forth his plate of supper without looking at it.He put it on the table, seated himself, and began tostare at it, as he had stared at everything else. Stellalaid a knife and fork by his plate, holding herself aloof.

H e might have been a stranger. Nobody spoke to him.Then he seemed to see the food for the first time,or to become aware of it as food, and pushed it awaywith a gesture of distaste. The girl in the window wasall this time regarding him with a stricken expression.The ticking of the clock became very loud. W eaverheard it. They were greatly mystified to see him goto the stove and begin thoughtfully to search the wood-box on the floor. He found a small splinter, whittledit a little and fitted it under the low side of the clock,making it plumb. Instan tly, of course, its fickle heartchanged. It ceased exhorting the wife to "be firm, befirm, be firm," and began contentedly to murmur,"that's it, that's it, thafs it." On the wall was a pic-ture of Maud S. in a fluted walnut frame, crossed atthe corners with carved butterflies. For a long timeW eaver stood looking at that. Th en he looked at his

wife, took a step toward her, and stopped as one whoremembered a hu rt. W hat could he say? H e was not



102 SATAN'S BUSHEL

one to repent, promise or pray. H e turned toward thedoor and was walking out. And it was then the fam-

ily's friend spoke his mind out heroically. H e had noway of understanding a man who in guilty circum-stances would not grovel and stultify himself with ex-planations.

"Absalom Weaver," he said, "land is for themthat 's fit to own land. You ain't fit. That' s whyyou've lost it. You a in't fit for anything, no r be you

sorry."Weaver was already in the open doorway, going

out. H e turned and spat on the floor."That's what I do when I cross a snake's trail," he

said. "I spit in it." Then he went out, closing thedoor behind him. The family's friend ever afterw ardbelieved this act was a sign of how deeply his weaklittle shaft went in. H e reared his pride upon it.

The natural dramatic period is never completelyrealized. Something unexpected happens. The re wasnow a stir in the kitchen. The youngest child, nolonger weeping, had taken her little coat down fromits peg and was getting into it and pulling on her arc-tics at the same time. Everyone sensed what shemeant to do; and no one spoke. W ithout stopping tofasten her arctics she snatched up her knitted cap andmittens and rushed headlong out of the door in pursuitof her father. T hat the mother made no gesture torestrain her seems at first a little strange, and yet it isnaturally explained. Secretly, perhaps not admittingit to herself, she must have realized that Weaver'sexit was final. Trust a silly woman to know her own




man's folly. Secretly, too, she wished it so, and be-cause she wished it she could not acknowledge it. In

permitting the child to run after him she proved toherself that she did not know and did not wish it.Afterward she was able to say, even to believe, thatshe supposed he was going for a walk in the night, ashe often did, and would bring her child back. Andthus she was provided with a monstrous grievance—namely, that he never did.

"From that day to this Absalom Weaver's beenwalking to and fro in the earth, and the girl with him,"said the absurd little primate who sat in the shade ofthe ash tree . H e clicked in his beard with a malevolentsound, like a mechanical toy shutting up. H e had donehis worst. There the delation ended.

"How long ago was that?" Dreadwind asked.

"Nineteen years and five months.""And how old was the girl that went with him?""Ten."Dreadw ind reflected. T hat would make C ordelia's

age nearly thirty . And he had thought her still a girl.H e r age thrilled him. Thi rty ! A proper age. Thirty ,with the look of youth. A miracle reserved for him !

One more question. It was malicious, therefore heheld it until the very end. "D id you marry M rs .Weaver?" he asked.

Until then, through all that recital, only the lips ofthe patriarch had moved. Now the fingers twitchedand the knees trembled. The re seemed for a longtime no likelihood of an answer. But it did come.

"She died," he said.



104 SATAN'S BUSHEL

T hat was his last utterance. N ot another w or3could be got out of him.

Now Dreadwind retraced his steps. There wasnothing else to do. H e was thinking he knew every-thing about them except how to find them when sud-denly he remembered that poucji of brownish vilepow der. H e had left the stuff at the state agriculturallabora tory to be analyzed. Forebodings assailed himas he stopped to get the report. The p lant biologist

on seeing him behaved in a constrained manner andreferred him to the executive secretary of the bureau.That person scrutinized Dreadwind suspiciously andproduced the laboratory's report with an ominous air.But instead of showing it he sat for a long time lookingat it himself, tapping his foot against his desk, unableto decide how to act.

"Where did you get this stuff?" he asked.Dreadwind said he had found it at the roadside in apouch.

uYou didn 't bring it here in a pouch. You broughtit in a paper."

Dreadwind said he had thrown the pouch away." W h y ? "

"Because I didn't like the look and smell of it,"said Dreadwind, beginning to realize that he neededhis wits. The last thing in the world he meant to doon any account was to involve Weaver in serious trou-ble. And this was evidently about to become serious.H is answer was perhaps technically true. H e hadthrown the pouch away as an instinctive precaution.

Even so, he could say that he liked not the smell and



SATA N'S BU SH EL 105

look of it. Then he was asked if he knew of any per-son having a possessory relation to the pouch? H ad

he seen anyone drop it ? That was coming too close."I'm not to be interrogated in this grand-jury man-

ner ," he said, affecting to be irr itated . "I found thisstuff by the roadside, as I have said, and I was curiousto know what it was. So I brought it to you. T ha t'squite simple, isn't it? I don't know yet what it is, andsince I took the trouble to bring it to you I'd like to

know.""It's rust," said the secretary, bluntly reacting; "the

germinating principle of wheat rust.""I've heard of rust," said Dreadwind, "but I don't

know exactly what it is. Tell me, please.""Rust," said the secretary, "is the common name for

a paras itic fungus that attacks and destroys wheat. I tmultiplies with incredible rapidity from spores, some-what like mushrooms, if you know. There is blackrust and red rust. This stuff is the seed— that is tosay, the spore— of black rust. Enough to kill half thewheat in Kansas. I never saw anything like it. Thespores do not naturally occur in this concentrated way.Someone must have gathered or cultivated the stuff fora felonious purpose."

"If I come across any more of it I'll know whatto do," said Dreadwind, and departed.

This, then, was the explanation of Weaver's excite-ment and tragic manner that morning when Dreadwindsurprised him in the act of spreading the powder on the

air.He was killing the wheat!



106 SATA N'S BU SH EL

But how was W eaver himself to be explained ? Oneday kneeling in ecstasy at the foot of a wheat stalk to

observe the nuptial ceremony!—another day sowingblack dea th upon it ! Dreadwind kept seeing him firstin one act and then in the other; and these were as theacts of separate persons, one a mystic, the other amonster. And this was also C ordelia's father! H egrew sick from thinking of it.

It was natural that his thoughts of Cordelia should

associate with Mrs. Purdy, who had been the one andonly point of contact. H e liked the woman. H e re-membered her smile. There was knowing in it; alsoa little teasing and that slightly roguish, sweetly ironicair with which a woman looks on at these m atters , as ata play wherein she has more of the secret than theactors and enjoys their silly confusion. H e went to

see her again. Nearly three weeks had gone by."I was passing," he explained."O h," she said with a certain inflection. "W on't

you come in."She seemed more friendly, more knowing; and with-

out asking if he was hungry she began to set the tableand prepare food. I t was mid-afternoon.

H e watched her for a while without speaking. H ermovements were quick and deft. Just to sit thereunder her ministrations was a soothing experience.Also for some reason it was reassuring. She knewC ordelia. W as tha t it? And with all her archnessshe was sympathetic.

"Are you sure the envelope she left was meant for

me?" he asked.




"Weren't you?" she answered, bending over thestove.

"But how will she ever know I got it?" he said.The food was ready. M rs . Purdy put it before him.Then she made a trip to the spring house for butter.With putting the butter on the table she sat down her-self, and said, looking at him steadily, "She knowsyou got it."

"W ha t! " said Dreadwind. "H ow did she find it

out?""I shouldn't have told you," said Mrs. Purdy."W ill you have some jelly?"

"Why shouldn't you have told me ?""Shouldn't have," she said with a puckered mouth,

shaking her head."Has she been here?" asked Dreadwind.

"What a pity, now, you couldn't have been passingthree days ago," said Mrs. Purdy.

"Was she alone?"" W h o ? ""C ordelia. W as her father with h er ?""When?""Three days ago."

"My, how you do pin a body down," said Mrs.Purdy. "H av e I said she was here three days ago? Ionly said what a pity you couldn't have been passing."

Dreadwind could see that she meant in the end totell him. And whether she told him all or less, shegave him more than she knew. C ordelia had beendiscovered at daylight, sitting alone on a bench in the

front yard.



108 SATAN'S BUSHEL

"That round bench under the apple tree?'* he asked.Mrs . Purdy nodded. Of course; there was no

othe r bench. W hat more commonplace object in theworld than a bench? Yet suppose it happens to markthe point in space where the lines of two lives, infinitelypredetermined through all the chances of matter, havecrossed for the first time. T h a t was the bench onwhich he sat down beside her in the lantern ligh t. I twas there she gave him her name. M rs . Purdy knew

nothing of this. She paused for a moment and studiedhim when he mentioned it; but she saw nothing in itand went on. They had found her there at daylightin a kind of reverie. Nobody knew when she came.She had been weeping. A woman could guess it. Butshe was not sad, except in the way one might some-times like to be sad. And she was lovely. M rs . Purdy

would say it herself. She said it twice, noting the effectupon Dreadwind. Th ey had asked her to stop forbreakfast, and she couldn't, because her father wouldpresently miss her. W hat she wished to know fromMrs . Purdy was whether anyone had asked for her.If not she would like her envelope back.

"Did she seem pleased to know it had been de-

livered?" Dreadwind asked."She was relieved," said Mrs. Purdy, a little

severely, slowly choosing her word."And she left no message?" Dreadwind asked.Mrs . Purdy frowned, hesitated, thought better of

something she had been about to say, and continued:"What the girl really wanted was to tell me about adream tha t worried her. Th is was the dre am : Th ere



SATAN'S BUSHEL 109

were two great vines. One she knew and the othershe had forgotten the name of. Both had twined

themselves around her. She did not mind that . Shewould have liked it, in fact, only that each one strug-gled to tear her from the other and without meaningto do so they were hurting her terribly. She keptsaying to them, 'I t is unnecessary! So unnecessary!'But neither one would listen. W ith th at she woke up.She had dreamed this many times and it was giving her

great anxiety.""Did she wish you to tell me her dream?" asked

Dreadwind.Mrs . Purdy disdained to reply or to look at him, but

rose suddenly and began clearing off the table with anacrimonious air, like the gust of wind that comes sud-denly aboard ship and causes everything movable toslap and bang in a warning manner.

"Would it be possible for me to get a message toher through you?" asked Dreadwind, rising.

"It would not," she answered, going on with herwork. Relenting a little she ad de d: "She won't beback. She was sure of th at ."

"And you have no way of reaching her?""No more than you have," she answered over hershoulder.

"Thank you," he said, holding out his hand.Then she looked at him, relented a little more, and

they shook hands. She followed him slowly towardthe door. On the threshold he looked back. She was

gazing at him.



110 SATAN'S BUSHEL

"T hey follow the harvest," she said. "T ha t's allI can tell you."

"Why do you look at me as if—as if—I had forgot-ten something?" he asked."You haven't forgotten anything and I'm not look-

ing at you," she said. " I'm only thinking.""What are you thinking of?""Of what happens to women," she said, and turned

away. The last he heard of her was a clangor of stove

lids.They followed the wheat. W ell, then— there wasnothing else for him to do.

And now you have him, to the eye, an aimless vaga-bond, wandering up and down the wheat country,sometimes sauntering, sometimes in haste, making in-quiries so guardedly that almost nobody would have

guessed he had a purpose at all, much less that impa-tience consumed him. I t had occurred to him onreflection that hitherto his search had been too undis-guished. W eaver might have heard of it.

By intuition he followed that magical wave of green-gold color the first sheen of which is seen by early Junein Texas. Thence, adding mass and weight and glory

to itself, it trave ls by two movements. One is whim-sical and zigzag, determined by the local weather andwhere the captured sunlight comes here a little soonerripe than there . The other one is stately and momen-tous, tending always north.

Dreadwind noticed that as the wheat changed colorfrom green to golden opalescence, change was every-

where in everything — the sky, the light, the insect



SATAN'S BUSHEL lit

hymn, even in the ways of people. Men became dis-

traught and anxious.I t is a time of crisis. There is gladness in the sight

of plenty, yet this is strangely tinged with melancholy.W hy is th at ? W hy were people always sad about a

harvest, therefore having recourse to festivals and

merry-making? Perhaps because finalities are sad.

W h a t was soft and lithe and lovely now is dry and

brittle, fixed in momentary splendor. The steel is

whetted. The hand that raised it up must also cut it

down. Life contains death and will not accept the fact.The wheat complains. Its whispering voice is now

grown old, petulant and querulous. The heads are

heavy and seem to toss about in pain.Dreadwind must have made a very strange figure

against that background. But whereas at first he had

been much noticed and stared after, now his appear-ance, sometimes in most unexpected circumstances,excited no surprise. This was another change. Part lyit was owing to the nervous tension peculiar to the

atmosphere of ripening wheat. The farmer at thistime becomes absent-minded. His thoughts are on

the wheat and he does not know what he is thinking.H e has an amazed impersonal attitude toward the

event, as if a field of grain crying:

Cut me, cut me;

I am brittle.

Cut me, cut me;

Hurt me little,

were not his own, not a thing a man had done, but arevealed episode, natural because it recurs and none



1 1 2 S A T A N ' S B U S H E L

the less mysterious for that reason. H is last act atnight is to look at it again. A t daybreak he will be

seen wa lking in it. H er e and there he plucks a head,breaks it open, examines it, smells it, tries the kernelw ith his finger nail and then with his teeth. A ll thetime his eye is anxiously watching the weather . I t maycome on to rain or to blow or to do both. N oth ing iscertain. I f he is religious he will pray and make vow s.If he is superstitious he will look for signs and omens

and secretly perform little rites of propitiation. A swho would not ?

The great task of modern civility is to create andsustain an artificial environment expressly designedto eliminate the savage uncertainties of natural exist-ence. W ith in that artificial environment, besides se-curity, there is forete lling. N oth in g is left to chance;

noth ing is miraculous. I ndustry no longer relies uponwind and rainfall—that is, upon the whims of naturefor the pow er to turn its wh eels. W hen the ironmasterpours ore, fuel, limestone and chemicals into the topof a blast furnace he need not pray for a good run ofm etal. H e know s precisely wh at the iron will be be-cause its qualities are predetermined by scientific chem-istry. H e hath dispensed w ith the Lo rd. So withevery physical process in all that world of machinesand laboratories from which mischievous, meddlesomedeities have been cast out.

But the farmer who feeds this world has no artificialenvironm ent. H e stands alone facing the elemental

rhythm s. T hey are uncontrollable, unpredictable. H emay know plant biology, he may know the chemistries



S A T A N 'S B U S H E L 11 3

of soil and vegetation, he may be as scientific as theDepartment of Agriculture could wish him to be, and

yet the wind will blow when and how it listeth, the rainwill fall by a law of its own, the sun hath no preoccu-pation with the weal of mankind. I n all nature thereis no forethought for civilization.

The cities are either ignorant or contemptuous ofthis fact. They are walled about, not w ith walls ofstone as before, but with the barriers of the applied

sciences. T he y know not how their food is producednor whence it comes. Somewhere in the world the sunwill shine; somewhere the rain will fall. The y haveships and railroads to bring their food from any dis-tance and the go ld wherewith to pay for it. One'sdinner in New York may represent Canadian sunlightconverted into wheat and South American sunlight

changed into beef, and one may not only never know-it; one never even thinks of it.

Thus in modern circumstances it is the farmer alonewho carries on the struggle in a natural environment,subject to the hazards of season, weather, sunspots,mysterious cycles of injurious life. H e belongs to arace apart. W e have forgotten the language in which

he thinks.Well, another reason why Dreadwind in his going

about began to be less noticed was that his figure wasswallowed up in that tide of human miscellany whichrises each year in Oklahoma and follows the sickle barnorth to the end of the harvest.

The annual migration of reapers is one of the old-est proceedings in the world. I n romantic times i t



114 SATAN'S BUSHEL

occurred over limited areas in a naive, spontaneousmanner. Ru th came out of the land of M oab to Beth-

lehem in the beginning of the barley harvest. T h a twas a great way to walk and really no distance at all.Now with railroads and steamships it may be organ-ized massively on economic lines, and sometimes is, aswhen shiploads of Italians go each year from Italy'swinter to South Am erica's summer and return when theArgen tine crop is by. Every month in the year is

harvest time somewhere in the world. Italian grainripens in June; Argentine wheat is ripe in December.

There are places where the migration can still bepicturesque. But with us the spirit is almost forgotten .Nowhere else is the harvest horde so accidental, so un-festive, so ephemeral in structure, so dissimilar in itselements. It has no common character, no place of

origin, no existence before or after; and when youthink what would happen if it did not appear like aself-evolved phenomenon at the appointed time andplace you wonder again how people in the cities cantake their food for granted . And yet it has neverquite failed. I t were a pity if it did.

The life is nomadic and free, the wages are clear,

humanity is level and the work is a series of suddenexploits. N o r is this tale of inducements the full per-suasion. The call of the harvest is something you feel.It reaches down to the earth sense in men, to blood-and-tissue memories of exciting primeval festivals,myth rites, ancient forms of nature worship; tomemories of the feast of Pentecost, of sacrificing to

Ceres, of how the fearsome Druids celebrated the




ingathering, of the reapers1 kern baby, of cutting themare, of the maiden sheaf, of the Roman saturnalia at

the end of the vintage when amid universal rejoicingand license even the slaves were free and ate at themaster's table.

Long after people began to gather in cities the re-sponse to this great ground call was universal andserved two needs. One was the instinctive human needfor contact with the ea rth . The o ther was the need

of agriculture for extra hands when the grain is ripeand must be taken quickly. Thus for a great while thecity perform ed an ideal function. I t absorbed thesurplus labor of the country at other times and releasedit for the harvest. But on the rise of modern indus-trialism, with its fixity of special tasks, all this use andcustom fell. Hence new social problems in the city

from a thwarting of the ground instinct; hence alsothe resort of agriculture to labor-saving power ma-chinery.

T he call has never changed. Only now so manylive amid the ceaseless din of wheels and tools thatmillions never hear it. They would not know it if theydid. Those who do respond are the unreconciled.

Actually the number is large . Relatively it is sm all—that is to say, small and diminishing in relation to thevaster growing number in whom the instinct is frus-trate ; small again in relation to the magnitude of thework perform ed. In all the cities of the world two orthree hundred years ago there would not have beenlabor enough to harvest by hand in our time one North

Am erican wheat crop. M achinery does it. T he




shapeless, self-mobilized body of men that appearseach year where and when the sheen of green-gold

color begins to show, that fastens upon it, that devoursit utterly so that nothing is left but a dead pale stubble,is really symbolic. W ha t does it symbolize? T h evestige of a custom we have perhaps done very ill topart with. A blind triumph of machine pow er. Atransition comp leted. A problem unsolved. A nd wetrea t it as a casual economic fac t! H arvest labor, we

say, governed by the law of supply and demand. I tcomes when it is wanted, perhaps not because it iswanted but for another reason, and disperses itself.

When the harvest is ended it will vanish away.

To an eye above this economic fact might resemble amultiple animal, headless and eyeless, with some powerof peristaltic locomotion, an unerring instinct for the

color on which it feeds, one common belly and myriadmouths, each mouth equipped with a highly destructivemechanism. These innumerable mouth mechanisms,one on each tentacle of the animal, are what producethat droning, ominous sound. I f the mind behind theeye above were given to reflection it might deducefrom wh at it sees a perfect theory of evolution. For -

merly this reaping animal made no sound at all, seem-ing rather to work by stealth with sharp sickle teeth,and was so much smaller and less voracious that onlya painstaking observer would know it for the samespecies of thing. T h e conclusion would be that it hadincreased thus in size and effectiveness because thestuff on which it feeds became for some unknown rea-

son much more abundant on the face of the earth.



SATAN'S BU SH EL 117

But to its own eye this animal resembles nothingso complex and fanciful. I t sees itself simply as a band

of diverse individuals united for a time in the task ofdriving through the wheat fields mechanical beasts—that is to say, automatic reapers, binders and thresh-ers. And that of course is as we see it. W e takeeverything for granted, including the mechanical beastsall evolved from the sickle, the greatest of which iscalled a combine, moving under its own power on

wheels eight feet high, devouring a swath forty feetwide, cutting, threshing, cleaning and sacking thewheat as it goes, in one continuous operation. Ten d-ing these beasts is increasingly the work of the harvesthand.

If it seems less romantic than when grain was cutwith a blade on a crooked stick and threshed under

the feet of oxen, that is so. But if it seems less thrill-ing that is because wonder moves only in mysteries andman is not mystified by his own inventions. N o deityever thought to create a harvesting machine. T ha tone could have done it, had one thought of it, is opento doubt.

Even yet among the migrant reapers you will findskilled farmers. Th ey are needed on the smallerfarms, where the wheat on being cut is first shockedor stacked to be threshed afterward—men who knowhow to build and cap a shock to make it wind andweather proof. These are the landless ones who hun-ger for it. Some are tragic, worthy only to be hired.They reap in envy. Others are peasant immigrantshither blown by winds of hope. They will presently



118 SATAN'S BU SH EL

take roo t. But in the modern harvest, owing to theuse of power machinery, much of the work requires no

special farming skill. Almost anyone may turn hishand raw to it. Hence in that sprawling procession,which to the eye above would resemble a monstrous,devouring organism, one will find tramps, casual vaga-bonds, preachers, artisans, college students, anaemicsin quest of health, criminals in hiding, foreigners, dere-licts, poets, artists, strife bringers, thieves, old wives

and new at the cook shacks with numerous self-pre-serving progeny appended. The scene has many as-pects and there are many ways of viewing it. The reare ways to view it profitably. The men who do thisdo nothing else. They look with keen, appraising eyes,seem never to be in haste, give no account of theirerrand and are always passing. Dreadwind, to whom

everything else was strange, knew a good deal aboutthese men. H e identified them at once. N ot as indi-viduals. H e had never seen them before. But heknew what they were doing and whose instrumentsthey were.

They were the eyes of the wheat pit.



C H A P T E R V I I

A S a timber looker by walking through a forest* ^ and sighting it with his eyes may guess very ac-

curately how many board feet of lumber it will cut, sothese crop experts who go ceaselessly to and fro in thewheat, observing its growth, charting its area, compar-ing its conditions, detecting rust and blight, are be-lieved to be able to estimate the total yield in bushels.

Seldom does it happen that any two of them agree.The re is no difficulty in that fact. I t is ra th er better

that they should disagree, for then as their reportsare received in the wheat pit and telegraphed simul-taneously to thousands of offices all over the countrywhere people sit in front of blackboards betting on therise and fall of prices there is the excitement of contraryopinion; gambling is stimulated. Violent controver-sies arise. One expert, who last year was righ t when

the United States Department of Agriculture waswrong, says there will be a big cro p; rumors of damagehave been exaggerated for reasons which he will notdemean himself to characterize as they deserve. Andthe Board of Trade house that employs him swearsto this and advises its clients to sell wheat for a fall.Another expert, who does not pretend to be infallible

but whose record for five years has been such that onewho h ad bet on his conclusions consistently w ould have

119



120 SATAN'S BUSHEL

gained all the money in the world—he says the cropwill be short, no matter what faked-up estimates to the

contrary are put out by whom he forbears to name;and the Board of Trade house that employs him urgesits clients to buy for a rise.

Thus speculation in phantom wheat is fomented.T ha t is the main thing. W hy else should Board o fTrade houses hire experts to estimate the wheat crop?

Those clients who sit in rows before the blackboards

are like leaden lumps if you let them alone. T heycannot make up their own minds. A ct upon them w ithsuggestion and they become golden geese . T he y nei-ther sow in righteousness nor reap in mercy. Few ofthem would know a field of wheat from a patch ofalfa lfa. Y et in the course of a year they will buy andsell twenty bushels of phantom wheat for each bushel

of real wheat produced by the labor of two and ahalf millions of farmers. I n order that they shall dothis they must be supplied with suggestions. H en cethese private crop experts, hired by the proprietors ofthe blackboards, to keep the speculative mind in astate of futile anxiety.

The Department of Agriculture also estimates the

crop. But its repor ts are issued once a month. T h atis not often enough. W ha t would speculation do be-tween times? Besides, the private experts always dis-agree with the government experts, and this adds zestto the blackboard betting.

A more painstaking and very secretive type of ex-pert was new to Dreadw ind. H e represented neither

private speculators in the wheat pit nor the proprietors




of blackboards with their little pens of golden geese.His employer was the hard-minded miller; and it was

his extraordinary business to know what was in thewheat—in the kernels of the wheat.

The chemical content of wheat varies with soil andlocal weather. In an area where growing conditionshave been exceptionally favorable— where, for ex-ample, there has been by chance just the right amountof rainfall, the precious gluten content may be higher

than in wheat on similar soil in the next neighborhood,though it all looks precisely alike. The difference isinvisible and yet very important. The miller's expertworks intensively. H e marks those areas where forspecial reasons the gluten content is likely to run highand watches them tenderly. W hen threshing beginshe takes from each area a little sample and rushes it

off to a laboratory to be analyzed.If the chemical examination confirms his expecta-

tions the miller is informed that wheat in this partic-ular place contains a premium percentage of gluten.Does the miller then instruct his agent to buy thatwheat at a premium price? N o, indeed. H e entersthe fact on his working record. H e knows what the

wheat contains and to what elevators the farmers whogrew it will bring it for sale and storage . In due timehe needs such wheat to mix with o ther wheat, and whenhe does he orders a few carloads from the local ele-va tor in one of those high-gluten areas— orders justthe common grade at the common price and nobodyknows the difference. Thu s the millers, thanks to the

work of their experts, are able to fish premium wheat




out of the great No. 2 stream and pay only the averageprice.

• * *

"And what's the matter with that?" said Moberlywith a snort. "H ow will a miller know where thegluten is unless he finds it for himself? The farmermight analyze his own wheat. But he won 't. And

when the miller has found it it has already cost himenough."

"I 've nothing to argue ," I said. "I 'm telling you,as he told me, how Dreadwind saw the harvest."

"Meanwhile the needle is lost in the straw," saidGoran, groaning. "W e've got to learn all about strawbefore we can find the lovely object. If I didn 't knowit had been found by the way the story started I'd goto bed now. H ow ? Tha t's what I want to hea r."

"You'd better hear what happened to Dreadwind,"I said; "how he saw more than appears in the harvestand what construction he put upon it. Otherwise youcannot understand the change in him. I remember hesaid just at this point that all his life in the city hehad been asking himself a certain question. I t arosefrom the theatrica l spectacle of spending. Everywherethis spending—silly, wasteful, competitive, imitativespending, until many were bored with it, wanting noth-ing and spending more. Shops more magnificent thanancient temples, all dedicated to this worship. M iles

of lighted streets frantically jammed with spenders.Where did they get it? That was the question. Some-




body had to pay for all this spending. H e never couldsee who the payers were. H e was a spender, you see.

H e produced nothing and yet he could spend. H owand by what right ? Perhaps the question arose reallynot from the spectacle as he thought; he had got towondering about himself. Well, now he began to see.The farmer was one who paid. The re might be othersalso. Th e farmer certainly paid. Everyone whotouched him made him pay. The whole modern affair

was organized against him. W hat he sold he sold onthe buyer's terms. W ha t he bought he bought on theseller's term s. T hat was all you needed to knowabout him, Dreadw ind said. One in that situation wasbound to be exploited. People could not help exploit-ing him. I t was not a conspiracy. I t was a condition.Imagine trusting human nature not to take advantage

of the seller who asks, 'How much will you give?'Imagine trusting it not to take advantage of the buyerwho asks, 'How much will you take?' "

"Rotten nonsense," said M oberly. "A farmer's afarmer. T hat 's all you need to know about him. H edoesn't know any better. If he did he wouldn't be afarmer."

"Yes, he said that, too," I answered; "almost inthose words— that the farmer was what was left. Thetalent he wants is attracted away in the gristle andtrained on the other side to be used against him. H espoke of you, M oberly. H e said you were the mostskillful grain manipulator in the world. You wereborn on a farm. Did you remain there? N o . In-

stead of developing your extraordinary skill of trade



124 SATAN'S BUSHEL

in the farmer's behalf you went over to the other side

—to the buyer's side."

Moberly snorted. "What do you mean by the

buyer's side?" he demanded.

"I don't mean anything. Are you asking me what

Dreadwind meant?"

"What does anybody mean by that?" he asked.

"One side or another. There is no one side. Grain

is handled in a two-sided market place like any other

merchandise, or like securities on the Stock Exchange.There is buying, and there is selling, neither without

the other. A trader must work on both sides."

"Obviously," I answered. "Only Dreadwind called

my attention to a fact I had never thought of before.

The Stock Exchange, for example, is a seller's market.

It is organized and conducted from the seller's point

of view—in the interest of those who create securitiesfor sale. Therefore the paramount effort is to keep

prices as high as possible against the buyer. But the

Board of Trade is a buyer's market. Its machinery

was designed and is controlled in the buyer's interest—

that is, in the interest of those who buy and consume

grain. Therefore the dominant motive is to keep

prices as low as possible, to the seller's disadvan-tage."

"It isn't so," said Moberly, speaking without reflec-

tion."But it is," said Selkirk, who had not spoken before.

"It is so," he added, exquisitively tapping tn* ashes

from the end of his cigarette. "I shall never forget

i t "




"Is this a tale at all ?" sighed Goran. "D id yourreflective hero, this Mr. Dreadwind, now living with

a haunted tree in Burma— did he ?"" N o . He did not."




There was a nonexistent moment in which he almostsaw her where he had not seen her, clairvoyantly. Sq>he believed.

What really occurred to him in that imaginary iri«terval on the threshold of his office was much morefthrilling than any mental presentment of her image.I am telling you this. H e could not say it. Therecame to him in that instant an aching physical sense

of her existence, as of something that had never beerjrealized before, originally wonderful. W ith th at ex-perience came also the clear and astonishing perceptionof another reality. A very singular fact this was.When he closed the door he had been alone in theworld, a free and solitary person, preferring that stateabove any other. Now that was no longer so. H e

was not alone, nor did he wish to be.The hour of day was one o'clock. H e pushed the'

door open. On the floor were some letters. H e stirredthem with his foot and did no t pick them up. T h eticker by the window was running without tape. A llthis time it had been running without tape, producinga phantom record of a phantom thing. H ow appro-

p ria te ! H e wondered where the dust came from—<how it could get into a closed room—and began ab-sently to trace a pattern in it on the flat surface of his;desk. Th e pattern was— C C C C C . Then seeing wh athe did he smiled and with his handkerchief wiped the]top of the desk.

He shook the handkerchief in the air and used Hagain to rough-clean the little wooden object he hadpicked up with the other hand . Th is was a rudely




carved bear, about four inches high, with an absurdand friendly leer. I ts history is worth knowing. A s

a lonesome boy in Wall Street he used to pass it nightand morning in a curio dealer's window and gradually

invested it with a superstitious phantasy. W ith the

proceeds of his first tiny gambling transaction in the

bucket shop where he worked he went and bought it

for two dollars and it became, I believe, his only per-

manent possession. I t was both a luck idol and the

symbol of his practice as a speculator.

Now, having dusted it off, with a kind of abusive

affection, he put it down again in the middle of the

desk and stood for a long time gazing alternately at it

and then around the room . N oth ing else in the room

seemed in any way personal. Ever ything else had first

to be remembered, like the things one sees on coming

awake in strange surroundings. T h e past has to be

recreated, up to the moment of having gone to sleep.

Drea dw ind's past came back to him slowly. I t was

not merely that a certain experience discontinuous with

his past and perhaps incompatible therewith had be-

fallen him. H er e was another kind of fact. W h at

he had been he no longer was and could not be again.This was not a decision, not a matter of resolve, not

a conclusion arrived at by reflection. I t was simply

so. H o w it came to be so he did not know. Th ere

in front of him lay the memorandum in his own hand-

wr iting of his last transactions in the pit. H e had

been a wh eat gambler. Y es. But he knew that he

should never make another bet in the wheat pit. W h y ?H e did not know why. A nd it wa s not until he had



SATAN'S BUSHEL 129

dusted off the little bear and sat there communing withit that he knew it at all. There was no m oralizing

about it. There was only the finality.

"How extraordinary!" said Selkirk, in a tone ofsoliloquy.

"In what aspect?" I asked.

He replied slowly: "That a man's luck idol shouldtell him when to quit."

Of course, gambling is full of these concealed super-stitions. I t would be so. There is no way of account-

ing for luck beyond the simple rule of three. I n itsruns and wanton freaks it is totally mysterious; and itsvotaries may believe anything, not because what theybelieve is of itself probable, but because the mind can-no t rest in a state of disbelief. I t is necessary tobelieve that one believes something. Every successfulgambler walks with the dread that his luck will turn,or, worse still, that it will leave him without warning.H e will think it is only willful, prankish, that it is teas-ing him, when in fact it has turned its back, and this heis seldom aware of until it is too late.

Some will imagine that Dreadwind's funny little idolwarned him to quit. Others will suppose that he had

some intuition about it. That has happ ened— a manhaving all of a sudden the very definite feeling hi$




touch is gone, without being able either to analyze thefeeling or say what it is he has lost. The feeling isa fact, and though the rest of it were wholly imag-inary it would be dangerous, even fatal, for that manto go on. The feeling of having lost his way withchance would wreck his play. These are matters ofda rk subtlety. W e really know nothing about them.What Dreadwind himself thought would be of noimportance. The subject himself is always one whohas never rationalized his own acts. H e never can tellhow his mind works. H e finds himself here o r thereand cannot say how he came. H is mental processes areunconscious. C onclusions occur to him, complete andfinal, charged with impulse. They demand to be trans-lated forthwith into action; and they are.

However, it seems to be true th at he thought nothing

about it. I t was as if a mechanism inside of him hadclicked—and that instant his career as a gambler wasended. Th is happened to him there in his room. H ehad no premonition of its being imminent and notenough curiosity to explore the fact afterward. T h athe had a fortune aside may or may not be a relevantconsideration. It almost never happens that a gambler

forsakes his passion because he has money enough.Money is not the thing.My own opinion is that what clicked was his emo-

tional apparatus. I mean that what had really occurredwas a change of feeling toward the thing he had beendoing. W hether he thought it right or wrong, he hadcome suddenly to dislike it. H is heart could not be in

it. In his remote self he was, and is, I think, a pagan,



SATAN'S BUSHEL 13D

with a kind of animistic religion that awakened in him

at his first contact with nature. Or perhaps it was

from Weaver he had got the idea that all things areanimated by a universal spirit.

This was at the beginning of the third year of the

World War. With that faculty of swift, unerring

imagination which may be mistaken for an occult

power and is no more rare than a free mind having

nothing preconceived, he saw two things clearly.

The war would go on for a long time yet, and theprice of wheat, which seemed already very high, would

continue to rise. It would rise to any fabulous price.

There was no, telling. All that one had to do to win

was to buy it. He was so sure of this that he never

examined the conclusion. He could see it taking place.

Now looking back we may wonder why it was not

obvious to everyone. We almost forget that it was

not. We know for a fact that the wheat pit was

divided. Speculators were continually in a panic lest

the war should end overnight. Many stood obstinately

for a fall in wheat on the chance that it would. Any-

how, they said, wheat was already much too high to

buy for speculation. Which only shows, as Dreadwind

said, that the opportunity was such as gamblers dream

of and cannot imagine really. When it comes they will

not believe it. They are fettered by a sense of prob-

ability, whereas the great chance always presents itself

in the guise of extreme improbability. Their imagina-

tions were overwhelmed.

But think of it! At that time, though wheat seemed

very high, one who had started buying it and had




bought it steadily, blindly, without stopping to reflect,m ight have won a nabob's fortune. Capital was not

necessary; only the vision to see and the nerve to goon, against every sense of probability. A m ere shoe-string of capital, as little as fifty dollars, had beenenough for one who knew how to parlay his bets—that is, to double progressively upon winnings. I stressthis case a bit because it concerns also Weaver, as willappear. W eav er much more than Dreadw ind.

Directly, in fact, it concerned Dread wind little. D a yafter day he watched the price of wheat rise and nevertouched it. He had not the faintest inclination to do so.But it was a spectacle wo rth watching. H e watchedit with his mind, thoughtfully, attentively; his emotionswere not involved. T he y were preoccupied in a wayof their own. H e was waiting. You may guess for

wh at. For Cordelia, for spring, for the time when heshould place himself across their path at that point ofits annual beginning which he had located in tracingthem backward.

Knowing the impetuosity of his nature you wouldthink he fumed and rattled the calendar and stretchedhimself w ith idiotic anxieties. N o t at all. Sitting

there on the end of his spine with his feet in the win-dow, idly regarding the tape as it passed through hisfingers, he was serene and contented, in like mannerwith him who, having found the one pearl of greatprice, sold all that he had and bought it. T h at he didnot physically possess the pearl was circumstantial. I texisted. H e had found it. H e had surrendered every-

thing to it. N o violent lover's antics, which are never



SATAN'S BU SH EE 133

what they seem, but gestures of doubt, fear and irreso-lution. The form of his extravagance was tranquillity.

What we know at this time about the object is nextto nothing. Pu t it all together. A glance or two fromthe woman across the hostility of a jealous father, asilent episode in the wheat field, a looking back, andthen a token—the spikelet of wheat in flower—to bedelivered to someone who might ask for her at thehouse from which she vanished. I'm sure he told it all,

at least all that lay within the reach of words. It seemsvery little on which to found an ecstasy.

You may suppose the source of this ecstasy was therevelation of nature through which he had passed andthat Cordelia was of this experience the passive sym-bol. Or you may suppose that the emotion of love isegoistic, having the subject within itself, requiring only

that the object shall exist, wherefore the thought of itmay be more exciting, more creative, than the reality.This would cause it to seem a thing not external to theman, not achieved in collaboration with him, but anedifice of his own imagination, corresponding to hispower of abstract idealization. The object in thatcase is a myth.

But is there not always the possibility of a perfectinstance? Is not the combined event of two coessen-tial human beings the one great expectation? It maynever yet have happened tha t we know of. Gran t tha tit never has . Yet whence arises this expectation if thething itself may not occur? I say no more. I merelyadd that if it happened accidentally, and yet of coursein a predetermined way, there would be no intellectual



134 SATAN'S BUSHEE

understanding of it. Once it had recognized itselfnothing could alter it. It would be as final as the fact

of one's birth . Neith er time nor space could touch it.Never could it be less or more, nor could it ever be asif it had not been. A separation of its two principleswould be as impossible as self-division. In that case—I say, in tha t case, Dreadw ind would not have w orriedabout when and how he should see C ordelia again. H ehad found her once for all. And though he should

never see her again, still it would be the same—almostthe same.

However, be the case what it was, he sat for dayson end, running into winter, in a kind of waking dream,while a tale went up and down La Salle Street aboutan old wheat gambler who had gone mad with the rise.The scene of his operations was the Open Board of

Brokers, and that institution was like a rickety net, setclose inshore for small and crippled fish, now about tobe wrecked by a whale.

The thing had been going on for some time beforeanybody heard of it because nothing that happens onthe Open Bo ard is properly noticeable. Th e place it-self is supposed to be invisible. Yet no one can help

seeing it. There it has stood for many years, with itssign up, across the street from the great ChicagoBoard of Tr ad e . It is one of the sights, only no onewho is respectable ever shows it to you or lets you gothere if he can help it.

If in passing with a member of the reputable Boardof Trade you ask what that is, he says, without looking

at it, "O h, that 's the Open Board ." Th en if you ask




him what the Open Board is, he says, "It's somethingwe can't get rid of.n He may, if you press him, tell

you how hard they did try to get rid of it. Theycouldn't because it was too deeply encysted in thecommunity. So at last it was accepted, like the taintedrelation it was, under an ambiguous treaty, which wasthat the Board of Trade would stop fighting it andblink at its existence if on its part it would undertakenever to be seen or heard and to walk circumspectly in

the twilight.This trea ty has been strictly observed. All the same,

curiosity is stronger than respectability; and this wasa very curious thing that had been going on. An oldwheat gambler gone mad, one who never in his lifehad been right before and now apparently couldn't bewrong. Success is generally a positive test of sanity.

This is different. There is no success in gamblingreally. Th ere are only heights and depths. One whosets himself against chance, who defies it, who, so tosay, wrings it by the beard and commands it to humorhim, is a reckless fool. H is moments of grandeur arein his mind and his belly will be kept with sops. Butone who does this and wins—wins steadily, progres-

sively, offensively— he must be mad. H e is at leastpossessed. The gods are pleased to be ironic. Theyare mocking him. And such pleasan tries have alwayssome ghastly sequel. O ther gamblers regard him withawe and fear. And such a thing will make talk where-ever it happens.

Dreadwind first saw a paragraph about it in a news-paper column of wheat-pit gossip. Then an acquain-




clear vision at last and the courage to pursue it ! H ewondered what kind of old man tha t would be. H e

wondered also why he went on thinking about him.He wasn't really interested beyond the simple fact.

Still, there was all the time a feeling of effort in theback of his mind, as if it were trying to establish somevery improbable association of ideas. W hatever thatwas, nothing came of it; instead, he was seized withan impulse to visit the Open B oard and have a look forhimself at the madman who had got his luck by thetail, as people thought, but who, as Dreadwind knew,had but the imagination to see an obvious thing.

He had passed the place often but he had neverlooked in.

It is a very large room, the size of a small theatre,on the street level. You walk right in, all the way in,and nobody asks you what you want or so much asgives you a look. I suppose th at is why they call it theOpen Board of Brokers. A t the Board of T rade, asat the Stock Exchange, only members may go on thefloor. Visitors are confined to the gallery. The re isno gallery he re. Brokers, customers and visitors are

all together. It is a democratic arrangement, trulyand naturally so, as everything is on the bottom plane.Nearly everyone here has already fallen and cannotfall any lower. The rest are such as cannot expect torise. It was their plane to begin w ith.

On the Board of Trade the minimum quantity ofphantom wheat one may buy or sell—the unit of trade

— is five thousand bushels. H er e one may trad e in ahatful. I t is petty gambling with the one merit of pre -



138 SATAN'S BUSHEL

tending to be nothing else. Ther e are no cash tables,no samples of actual grain, no millers or millers'

agents, nothing but prices to bet on; and these are notits own . T he y are received by wire from the big grainpits across the street.

At one end of the room, reaching to the ceiling, is agreat blackboard, lighted from the top by an overhang-ing row of electric lamps. A k ind of trestle board , sixor seven feet from the floor, runs the whole length of

the blackboard; and up and down this trestle boardwalks a man with a telephone receiver on a long cordfixed to his head, a bit of chalk in one hand and a pieceof ra g in the other . H e receives in his ear the pricesthat originate on the Board of Trade across the wayand chalks them up. W he n a column is full to the bot-tom he clears it with the rag and begins again at the

top.Under the blackboard is the trading pit—the round,

hollow rostrum, twenty feet across, three steps up andthree steps dow n. I t is fiercely lighted by a circle ofelectric lamps han ging low from the ceiling. I n theforeground facing it are some rows of wooden chairssuch as you find in cheap theatres, screwed to the floor.

A government weather map hanging to a post, a newsticker, telephone booths and sand boxes to spit in com-plete the equipment.

Peo ple are what you see. This cluster of hum anity,in a place that would be dark as midnight at high noonif not for the artificial illumination, is in a state of con-stant working, not in the sense of performing labor but

as a mass of separate organisms all entangled, appar-



SATAN'S BUSHEL 139

ently unaware of their contacts and mutual pressure,now one or two moving convulsively, then two or three

more while those others are still, suddenly a violentspasm through the whole mass for no reason you canunderstand, then again a period of total inertia, withhere and there a straggler prowling about. I t makesone think of a body of worms—worms at the roots ofthe wheat— only tha t worms work silently. A t leastwe cannot hear them. It is quite possible that they

hear themselves and that what they hear is not unlikethis low, raging sound to which the emotions of greed,envy, malice, disappointment and gloating contributeeach its dissonance and which expresses the whole lowmotive. There is no uglier sound in the world. Andit is inarticu late— that is to say, wordless. N o intel-ligible words are heard. The re are only shrieks,

groans, jeers and jungle cries.You will observe that these men have an affliction of

the sight. They look at you, at each other, at movingobjects, without seeing. The ir gaze is inward exceptwhen it turns to the blackboard. W hat is written therethey see, and almost nothing else.

H ow strange the gambling passion is! And how it

levels men by making them oblivious of one another!Here you see one who might be a blacksmith, anotherwho smells of the stockyards, men who keep theirdignity in soiled linen, men whose wives are out wash-ing, men who walk like rats, a few clean, well-kept oldmen for whom you feel a special distaste, and nearlyeveryone with some funny little tic or nervous habit—

a way of pulling the nose or picking the fingers or step-




ping over cracks on the floor. A great prop ortion o fthem are very old and long ago lost.

This was the scene on which Dreadwind entered.W ith one glance he took it in. H e understood it in-stantly in all institutional aspects. Y et he stood as onepetrified with astonishment.

There in the center of the pit, vividly marked out inthe light, stood Ab salom W eav er. H e stood alonewith a scornful, invincible air and had his back to the

blackboard. H e did not need to see the prices. H ecould tell how they changed by the reactions of thosewho stood on the steps of the pit in a closed ring, fac-ing him. T he y kept their eyes fixed upon him; he ga zedat the floor reflectively and moved his head slow ly fromside to side with an air of listening. Just at that m o-ment had come a lull in proceedings. The room w as

still, everything having fallen into an eddy of silence asm ay occur in the midst of a storm. T he price of wheathad not changed for some seconds, the chalk writer onthe trestle board was motionless, and minds were in astate of tension.

But there was another unexpected object in thatroo m . I n one bare corner of it, just inside the entrance

to the left, where the light was dim—there stood Cor-delia. Like a splendid wh eat stalk in a sty, thou ghtDread win d. H e had a glimpse of her before he sawW eav er. H av in g glanced at the pit scene he looke dat her aga in; and her face was averted. H e w as sureshe had seen him enter; she had been looking straightat him. She w as the only wom an in the place, not

counting the one wh o kept the tobacco stand by the out-




side do or ; and no one was near her. As Dreadw indapproached her he felt that she was aware of him. H e

stood at her side and still she did not look.In that instant the price of wheat changed and theair of the room was blasted by a fury of sound. Dread-wind saw tha t she shuddered. H e heard W eav er'svoice above the tumult and looked toward the pit.

The old man was standing alone, still in the centerof it. The howling ring seemed by some invisible

means restrained from crowding in upon him. Fromthe steps it leaned inward toward him, as far as pos-sible, with its multiple neck stretched, with cries ofrage, with flying arms and clawing fingers, as if butfor that invisible restraint it would seize and tear himto pieces. But of course they were only selling wheatto him— phantom wheat. H e was apparently the sole

buyer. H e bought it from them, bought all they da redsell, and then taunted them

"F arm ers, are you through? Farm ers of nonexis-tent acres, have you no more grain ? A little more. Iwant it. Go sweep your bins and see. Ye who canreap what was never sown, surely you shall find abushel more. You grow it in your minds. C ome, grow

me a little more."The price changed again and his voice was drowned.Dreadwind turned to look at Cordelia and found

her regarding him with a sad, wondering expression.He realized that what he had just heard and seen wasalready old to her. She heard without hearing it; sawwithout seeing it; and hated it.

N o t a wo rd passed between them. H e got some-




"Why not a cab?" he asked."Yes," she said. "W e tried tha t. But we had to

keep giving the driver directions without knowing anyplace to go . It 's better to walk."

Dreadwind was wondering how they lived—in whatcircumstances. T he address was a number in W abashAvenue, far down; it would be in the press of the city,where no one lived any more.

"We have some rooms there, over a store," shesaid, answering his thoughts. "T hree . It 's verysimple."

She regarded him again with that wondering ex-pression.

"W ha t is it ? " he asked.For a moment she hesitated, then reddened and

asked: "Do you do this too?"By this she obviously meant what her father wasdoing over there in the pit. Did Dreadwind do a sim-ilar thing in another place ? That was what she wasasking.

"Once I did," he said. "N ot any m ore." Sheseemed relieved and looked away; and he became dis-

tressed. " I think I know why your father does it,"he added. "H is reason is better than mine was."

This was delicate ground. First, his answer to herquestion implied a reflection on her father; then whathe added in defence of him to mend that effect seemedclearly to imply that she had cast a reflection upon himto begin with.

"I was thinking of you," she said.




W hat he said next was utterly stupid. Still, it wasthe kind of stupidity that does not matter.

"Did you know I tried all summer to find you?" heasked.

She looked at him gravely for a moment, the traceof a smile appeared, and she made no answer.




kitchen, dining room and living room all in one. I twas lighted by gas, burning in a single jet at the end

of a pipe that came straight down from the ceilingand term inated in a snakish curve. A black iron sinkin one corner. Some pieces of crockery on a pain tedshelf. On a box by the window a one-burner gas stove,the flame at low duty under a kettle of water. On thewindow ledge outside milk bottles and food parcels.T h a t was the larder. Th ey had just dined on milk,

bread, cheese and stewed prunes. The things had notbeen cleared off the table, which was covered withcheckered oilcloth. Tw o wooden chairs were a littlepushed back from it. The walls were decorated in astartling way with three-color advertising posters, finehalf-tone impressions in black and white, and innum-erable miscellany of the prin ting art— pasted to the

wall with no thought of symmetry, order or agreement.Once this had been a job pressroom. There was anodor of printer's ink, chemicals, strange incense, driedpaste and closed plumbing.

Under the gas light in a folding canvas chair satW eaver . A dish of coffee was on the floor beside him.H is knees were as high as his face. Open on one knee,

as it were a pulpit-stand, lay the book he was reading—Paracelsus Theophrastus Bombastus in Latin.

"Even to his habitation will ye seek and come," hesaid, looking at Dreadwind. T h a t was his salutation.

"I have an errand with you," said Dreadwind." H e has an errand ," the old man retorted. "N o

doubt he has an erran d. T hat which is smoke is the

mercurial principle. That which burns is the sulphurous



SATAN'S BUSHEL 147

principle. What remains is the ash." H e was sopleased with this delphic saying that he remembered

the uses of hospitality. "W ill you break bread w ithus?" he asked.

Cordelia gave Dreadwind an expectant look andstood poised, with an arm already reached out towardthe things she would prepare if he should say yes.

"Another time, if you will ask me," he said."Some coffee, then . Bring him a dish of coffee, ye

mercurial principle."She moved to do this; but Dreadwind declined

again."My errand is with you alone," he said to Weaver."Leave us, Cordelia," said the old man.He put his book face down on his knee, brought his

ten finger tips together and gazed over them fixedly at

Dreadwind, who, when Cordelia was gone, sat on oneof the wooden chairs, facing him.

"So you are the evil spirit one hears of in the wheatfields," said Dreadw ind in a low tone. "F ather Rusthimself. The killer of wheat."

The re was a hardening of W eaver's expression froma change in his eyes; nothing else. H e did not move,

but continued to gaze steadily at his acuser."That bag you dropped the morning I surprised you

by the roadside— I know what was in it," said Dread-wind. "T he seed of rust. Enough to have killed halfthe wheat in Kansas."

The old man 's eyes did not flinch."I might deliver you to the law," said Dreadwind,

and waited.




"You m ight," said W eav er thoughtfully. "Youmight do tha t very thing. If it worries thee thou

shouldst.""I don't intend to," said Dreadwind."I know you don't intend to," said Weaver."However," said Dreadwind, "I'm not the only per-

son who knows what you've been sowing on the wind.I couldn't have found out without letting others know.I mean that no matter what I intend to do the law may

find you out."" I t may ," said the old man. "T ha t is quite possible.Even so."

His voice was calm, quite level, with a note of taunt-ing in it. Dreadw ind was baffled. H e regarded the oldman with wonder. C ould he be blind to the enormityof his offense ? Was he a monster then ? Or had he

in him some deformed, fanatical conviction by whichhe justified his acts? In any respect, what a fatalistJhe w as!

"You must see the implications," said Dreadwind."T hey are damning. In one personality you go aboutthe country casting death upon the wheat, pretendingall the time to love and cherish it. In another per-

sonality you are a gambler in Chicago betting on theprice to rise. First, you destroy the food itself; thenyou seek to profit by that wickedness. The more youkill with rust the scarcer wheat will be and the higherit will rise. That's how any jury on earth would seeit. I can't help seeing it that way myself."

The re it was all naked. They looked at each other

for a whole minute. Then in a low tone W eaver said:




"I did not," said Dreadwind."You said they would hang me."

"I did not," said Dreadwind."You said what was true . They would," saidW eav er. "They would hang me with a hempen rope.But they hang themselves, they hang each other, witha rope they cannot see, a rope tha t does not exist. I t 'sname is surplus. Reasons— what? Reasons? The reis only one. I did not make it. N or do I understand

it. Tell me if you do . Tell me why less brings morethan plenty. W hy do seven bushels profit the farmermore than ten ? If you know why that is then every-thing else is clear. You don't know. Nobody know s.And why will the farmer grow ten instead of seven?The surplus, what is called the surplus—the rope thathangs him— it is in the last three bushels. Yet he will

produce them. H e cannot help it. H e must keep thatbargain I spoke of—his side of it—which is to defendwheat from its enemies and give it space; and wheatin its boundless gratitude hath overwhelmed him. Noww ha t? Shall the farmer who produces plenty be de-stroyed by his own industry? Or "

He paused, gazing all the time at Dreadwind, and

when he spoke again his voice was altered."T he wh eat," he said. "T he wheat itself. You

spoke of that."" I did," said Dreadw ind. " I spoke of th at .""That I stretched forth my hand against it.""Yes," said Dreadwind."Thou didst," said Weaver, extending his arm and

pointing his finger. A t a certain intensity of personal



SA TA N 'S BU SH EL 151

feeling he went naturally to the archaic pronouns andhis tones became sepulchral. Does it sound theatrical?But it was effective because the emotion required thatmode of expression. "Abominably thou didst," he con-tinued. "And tha t of all things was the one thoushouldst no t have spoken of— to m e. I say again, if ittroubles thee in thy mind thou shouldst tell it to thelaw. Sooner do that than speak of it again— to m e."

T hat was his period. It required an exit. Therewas always the possibility that he consciously drama-tized such moments; but even if he did there was neveranything false about the action. I t expressed the deepand permanent phantasy of his being. That one hasinvented one's own phantasy does not stultify the act-ing of it provided the invention to begin with was trueto one's natu re. W eav er's was. H e lived a made-uptragedy, acted a self-assigned role, and yet it was alltrue.

Having made the period he groped his way to thedoor through imaginary darkness—toward the outerdoor through which Dreadwind had entered, the doorin which C ordelia was standing. She moved to let him

pass, turning her back to the jamb. For a while hepaced the hallway, Cordelia watching him from thedoorway. H is steps gradually diminished. Th en adoor opened and closed and all was still. H e had goneinto his room, which opened off the hall separately, asall the rooms did.

With a glance at Dreadwind, Cordelia disappeared.

H e heard the same door open and close again. Shewas gone for perhaps fifteen minutes; and when she



154 SATAN'S BUSHEL

thing in her little world she had cast away to followhim and apparently he did not want her.

She looked back at the house. Someone had closedthe door. N o one was calling. The light burnedbrightly in the kitchen window, as if nothing had hap-pened. H ow often it had beckoned her home, saying," H u rr y ! H u rr y ! N othing will catch you, but doh u rry !" An d now it seemed not to know her. It hadcut her off; and the house was strange . I t did no t

occur to her to go back. She ran after her fatheragain, a te rro r of loneliness clutching her heart. Over-taking him a second time she put her hand in his. H eneither spoke nor looked at her; but she knew hewanted her; and thus they walked a long way withoutresting. For many days they walked when it wasnot too cold; when it was they lodged with strangers

who treated them with aloof curiosity and called herlittle girl. Th en they stopped for the winter at aplace where he taught a country school.

In the spring they set out again, walking south tomeet the harvest. Th is was the beginning of a trystwhich they kept annually thereafter. In Texas theyfaced about and followed the sickle bar all the way to

the Red River of the N or th . H e worked as a harvesthand. She was too small to do anything. H e took hereducation in hand . She could already read and w rite;but they had only two books. One was tha t volume ofParacelsus, the other was a small Bible; and these wereof equal value. M ore had been lugg age ; and it wastheir way to live without impedimenta of any sort.

There was never anything to carry. The clothes they




wore and what they had in their pockets—that wasall. At any moment they were free to rise and go.

He taught her in the rabbinical manner, through herears. This method had notable merits. C lasses hadneither time nor place, no beginning and no end. Theywere continuous, opportune and always interesting.You got your Latin verbs with whatever it was youwere doing, astronomy on starry nights, history onrainy days, literature to relieve the tedium of a day's

journey; botany, biology, chemistry and physics whereand however the true phenomenon occurred in nature'slabo ratory. Everything was explained as it happenedand then related to all tha t was known before. Andjust as one began to think the garden of knowledgehad been explored, then suddenly new vistas wereopened, extending to the mysteries. H e had been him-

self trained for the church and had, besides, a fine giftfor teaching. Surely never before had a woman beenso educated, and wholly to a man's liking. Of th ethings women teach each other she knew very little,for she had few friendships and no intimacies amongmembers of her own sex. And of the things a loverteaches she knew nothing at all.

So passed the three enchanted seasons—spring, sum-mer, autumn— in a state of idyllic vagabondage. Butthe winter was a horrible nightmare. Then her worldfell to pieces.

At first she did not understand why they came to thecity in the wintertime. They lived in one room and

she kept house on tiptoe. H e would leave each morn-ing shortly before nine and return at three; and if she



156 SATAN 'S BU SH ELI

was lonesome while he was absent, with no one to talkto and so much to be afraid of, it was even worse when

he was there, though of course in another way. The ircompanionship ceased. H e was gloomy, preoccupied,often ironic and irritab le. She did not know what hedid and could not bring herself to ask. She hardlydared , and besides, she dreaded to find out.

Still, one day she followed him to where he suddenlydisappeared through a large doorway. She waited a

long time and then, as he did not come out and as manypeople were continually passing both ways through thedoorway, she thought perhaps it was some kind ofthoroughfare and ventured far enough in to hear thewicked uproar that rises from the wheat pit—fromany wheat pit, but especially from the one at the OpenBoard of Brokers.

She was terrified. H e r first impulse was to rush inand find him and beg him to come away with her—back to their beautiful country where nothing like thiscould ever be. Instead , she ran all the way back totheir room and crouched there until he returned . H enoticed how strange she was and questioned her anx-iously, but she avoided telling him what she had done.

T ha t evening he was much more himself. The nextmorning he took her with him and left her with thewoman at the tobacco stand just inside the door. Everyday thereafter he took her with him. T ha t was howit started; and now she went with him because heneeded her. She would be afraid to let him go byhimself, he was so unseeing, so unpresent among reali-

ties. She doubted whether he knew where they lived




or could find his way home alone. H e had long leanedupon her figuratively; now he was beginning to lean

upon her actually, as they walked. That was onlyhere, in the city, and more now than ever before. Inthe country he walked in his own strength.

And this for all these years had been the design ofthe ir lives toge ther. The winters, ah, yes. They werenot to be remembered. But always came spring againand with it the delightful wandering, with happiness

running in their footsteps. They came to have a reg-ular orbit. And as W eav er grew to be known amongthe people therein he worked less and less as a harvesthand until he ceased to do so at all, and became asone of the ancient magi, a man full of arts and knowl-edge, giving shrewd and profitable counsel to the wise,performing offices of sorcery for the superstitious, thus

gradually assuming the character in which Dreadwindfound him.In a few years also Cordelia became helpful. She

filled her apron in the harvest. Between them theygained a livelihood easily, and came each winter toChicago with enough money to keep them in the waythey were wont to subsist, and the moiety over that

W eaver lost in the wheat pit."L as t times make one a little sad ," she said. "N o t

th at one would wish to go on and on forever. Onlybecause it is the last time. I wonder why."

"W hat was for the last tim e?" he asked."All the beautiful pa rt, " she said. "T hat h arvest

was our las t. Only the winter is left. I can 't see w hat

will happen. Perhap s I don 't wish to see."




"When did you begin to have this feeling?" heasked. "Suddenly, just now ? O r has it been grow-

ing?""To everything we knew I said good-bye this year,"she answered.

"Places," he said.She nodded. "Places. Friendly things. Bits of

scenery. Trees we had named and trea ted as people.A little church with a graveyard we came to one night

in a dreadful storm . W e saw it far off by the lightningand ran. The door was unlocked. W e were thereuntil morning. I t was the first summ er; and there hechristened me Cordelia."

"That was not the name you started with?""N o . There in the church, with the thunder split-

ting itself on the steeple, he read King Lear to me.

From memory, I mean. H e knew it by hea rt. Th echurch was dark. H is voice filled it and echoed round.By the lightning flashes I could see him walking upand down the aisle. Then I knelt at the alta r and hechristened me C ordelia. Th ings like th at ," she con-cluded.

"And a bench," he wondered. "A certain round

bench under an apple tree."She blushed; looking at him steadily. "T h a t wasnot good-bye," she said, "and Mrs. Purdy ought notto have told you."

No more than that did they say of the affair of theirhearts . I had almost said no nearer than tha t did theycome to it. But it had no external relation . I t existed

like a th ird part of them . I t was the fact implicit; ex-




plicit facts merely pertained to it. And so also withthe fulfillment. T h a t was to be long postponed and

it did not m atter. I t was never their way to makewords of their love.

Dreadwind was of Cordelia's notion that AbsalomW eave r's orbit was broken. M ore than this, he hada sense of impending disaster. That was not surpris-ing with the shape of facts in view. People thoughtW eav er was running on luck. Dreadwind knew better.

The old man had got a gambling position in wheat \th at was fundamentally logical. H e would undoubtedlypush it to the last extreme. The re was no foretellingthe sequel. The re was only the probability tha t itwould be catastrophic. On reflection th is seemed in-evitable. The re was no way of stopping him. Fea r,self-interest, satiety, a sense of consequences to himself,

and others—such constraining modes of thought andfeeling were lacking in him. H e had a demonic endin view. H e cared nothing for the temple. H e de-nounced it. One could imagine tha t he wished todestroy it. T o what might follow he was utterlyindifferent.

The spectacle fascinated Dreadwind. W ith rapidstrokes of imagination he gave it form and projection.I t had an unpredictable dimension. In a game itselfwithout limits a fanatic who knew no restraint had gotthe fatal hand. W ha t if he should play it out? Andthere was no reason to suppose he would not. Onlyone of Dreadwind's prescience would have sensed thepossibilities. I t is a fact that no one else did. H owcould the keepers of the great world wheat market




have been attending properly to their business andwatching at the same time for a mad comet to burst

from the door of that mean little place across the street—the Open Board of Brokers—where nothing of pri-mary importance could ever happen ?

Afterward for a long time, you may remember, no-bo dy quite believed' it as it really was. M an y thoughtDreadwind was behind Weaver, had invested money inhim, and wa s him self the daring principal. Circum-

stances gave some fictitious color to this belief, and asit was never denied by anyone who positively knew thetruth it still persists in legend.

Dreadwind did of course stand by, for a reason thatno w comes clear. A romantic reason, you see. H ecould not avert the catastrophe. I t would not haveoccurred to him to try. Cord elia was his true anxiety.

H is way of standing by was literal. H e took allthe rooms across the hall, furnished them in one day,and moved in.

Weaver apparently was never consciously aware ofthis astonishing gesture. A t least he never spoke ofit. A good deal of the time he seemed insensible tohis surroundings and what passed therein; or, wakingtt> them suddenly, he either accepted them indifferentlyor treated them as having been long familiar.

I n that way he accepted D readw ind without questionor curiosity. Cordelia go t another wooden chair andmade a third place at the end of the table. W ea ve rsaid nothing. Dread wind came every evening and atewith them. W ea ve r sometimes spoke when the guestarrived and sometimes gave him no recognition other



SATAN'S BUSHEL 161

than to include him tacitly. Afterw ard he would situnder the gas jet, in his folding chair, with his dish of

coffee on the floor, and read while Cordelia cleared thetable, Dreadw ind contentedly watching her. H e w ouldgo on reading while they walked in the hall and some-times he passed them silently on the way to his room.

Then one evening it pleased him to talk. A fly fellinto his bow l of milk. H e fished it out, dried its feet ,sent it away, and a flood of discourse fell from him,

beginning with the fly as a marvelous instance anddwelling at length upon the enigma of becoming andbeing in all things. H e talked for an hour continu-ously. H e was on his feet, looking at them, with athought half out of his mind, when of a sudden hisinterest broke. H e forgot what he had been saying,looked once or twice around, then turned abruptly and

went to his room.Not long after this Dreadwind one evening had din-

ner sent in from his room s. W eaver sat perfectly stilluntil the Japanese man had placed it on the table andwas gone, under Dreadwind's instructions not to re-main to serve it.

"Would we had died by the hand of the Lord in the

land of Egypt when we sat by the fleshpots," saidW ea ve r; and asked for his bread and milk. Seeingthey did not eat he added gen tly: "Em pty sayingsnourish old age. I am too fond of them. But allthings are good , so ye eat not of darkness. Pa rtakeand mind not the lion who cheweth straw."

But they never did it again.Th ere wa s no fault in his faculties. H e became c a d i




sounded and they were giving the old man a regularhazing . All the reserve with which his manner had

inspired them was broken down, now that he wasleaving. They dragged him out of the pit, pulled hishat over his ears, tied his muffler in three hard knots,rumpled his garments, beat him, jostled him, and thenall with one impulse they picked him up and carriedhim toward the door, cheering and shouting his name.H e took it passively. C ordelia and Dreadw ind res-

cued him at last. H e walked off between them andnever looked back.

One who had taken no part in the hazing andresembled a huge wading fowl stood in the doorwaycroaking: u He will be back. . . . He will be back."Dreadwind looked at Cordelia to see if she heard.She was shaking her head.

That evening Dreadwind referred to the change."May I introduce you to the wheat pit?" he asked.

"I washed my steps in butter and the rock pouredme forth oil," W eaver answered. From which Dread-wind understood that he wished to find his wayalone.

He made his first appearance the next morning.

Cordelia and Dreadwind watched from the gallery.H e stood on the edge of the wheat p it and did nothing.Nobody noticed him overtly, and that was a kind ofhazing . Generally a new member is tumbled about abit just to develop the nature of his goat. Everyoneknew who he was of course and eyed him surrepti-tiously. For three days he stood there on the edge, of

the maelstrom, doing nothing.



164 SATAN'S BU SHEL

And it was a maelstrom really. W heat was twodollars and fifty cents a bushel, and still rising.

Who dared to buy wheat at this great price?None of the little gamblers. They were afraid.The y sold it rather— sold it because they were afraid.

None of the big gamblers were buying it, either.They, too, were afraid, though for a different reason.The rise in the price of wheat was beginning to havean ominous social aspect. A public cry had been raised

against the pit. I t was widely believed that the prin-cipal Chicago gamblers, having bought the crop atmuch lower prices from the farmers, were now turningit into gold at the expense of the countries alliedagainst Germany in a war which was about to becomeour war as well. This was wicked in itself and veryrepugnant to our sympathies; but at the same time the

American bread eater was mulcted in a like manner.So the public believed. And it had been true. But allthe big, respectable gamblers were now standing aside,fearful of an experience in the pillory of public opinionIf the Government should act suddenly and catch themred-handed in the business of profiteering.

And yet the price of wheat kept rising. W ho bought

It? Who was the reckless customer that went on buy-ing it, regardless of the price of political consequences.Answer : WAR.

W ar was that kind of customer. Price was no ob-ject. The agents of France and Great Britain addedeach day millions of bushels to what the wheat pitcalled "that Eastern account.'1 The orders originated

in New York, where the Allied Buying Commissionsat.



SATAN'S BUSHEL 167

was Friday, the price touched three dollars and a quar-ter a bushel I

M inds were tense with dread . Men could not saywhat it was they dreaded; but something was about tohappen. I t was written in the air. The emeritus hon-orable J. P., guardian elephant of the wheat pit,walked round and round it saying, exhortively: "Boys,don't touch it. For everybody's sake let that M aywheat alone."

And there in the center stood Weaver, from time totime lifting his hands and taking all the wheat abovehim. Almost no gambler would touch wheat to buyit. M any were still willing to sell it.

That was the day the two British members of theAllied Buying Commission who had been buying wheatwith the Bank of England behind them arrived in

Chicago to look things over.I happened myself to know the illuminating partic-

ulars. Dreadwind did not. H e knew only the out-come ; I told him what is here to be set down.

This is what happened : W hen J . P . with his headwagging returned to his desk from walking round andround the wheat pit his telephone was ringing. T he

two British members of the Allied Buying Commissionwere invited to lunch at the Union League Club.W ould J. P . come? Yes, he would come, he said, ontwo conditions. One was that the Federal D istrictAttorney should be asked; the other was that he him-self should be perm itted to speak. Both conditionswere accepted.

At the lunch, besides the two English wheat buyers,




the Federal District Attorney and J. P., were seatedall the great men of La Salle Street and all the lords

of speculation in meat products and breadstuffs, in-cluding the bankers who kept unlimited credit at thedisposal of Moberly's Dearborn Grain Corporation,who owned it in fact, but who would not suffer them-selves to be called speculators. Anyth ing else.

When the amenities were amiably exhausted J. P.rose.

"I want the Federal District Attorney to listen tothis," he said. "W heat is three dollars and a quartera bushel and going up. For this we are damned. T h eBoard of Tra de is damned. I am damned. M os t ofthe eminent gentlemen sitting here are damned. N o wI want to ask a few questions. You"— he pointed tothe financier who was chairman of Moberly's Dear-

born Grain Corporation, calling his name—"have yougo t any M ay w heat? " T h e answer was no. One byone he called them, each in his name, and asked thesame question, exhorting the Federal District Attorneyto listen. T he answer was invariably no. N on e of thegreat men of La Salle Street, none of the lords ofspeculation in meat products and breadstuffs, had any

M ay wh eat. T he y could not produce am ong themone kernel of it. "N ow I ask myself," said J. P., "Iask myself the same question. 'H av e you go t anyMay wheat, J. P. ?' On my word I answer, 'No, nota bushel.' N o w wa it. I 'm not through. I ask ourEnglish visitors, 'Are you buying May wheat in theChicago pit at this price?' "

They denied it.




lords of speculation were dazed. T h e En glish buyers,with the Bank of England behind them were politely

sympathetic. W ha t could they do ? Th ey had notbeen acting as individuals. T hey had nothing to winor lose. T he y had been buying wh eat for the A llies.T he y wanted the wheat. I f the people they had boughtit from were unable to deliver it—well, that would berather awkward, wouldn't it? Y es, quite. T h at w asto say, they had the wheat pit by what it sneezed with.

When they were through there would be no wheatgamblers left in Chicago. Y es, one. H is name wouldbe Weaver.

But all the time the guardian elephant had a wickedlight in his eye. H e gathered together the great menof La Salle Street and all the lords of speculation inmeat products and breadstuff, locked them into a roo m ,

and kept asking them one question: What were theygoing to do to save them selves? A ll the next day,which was Saturday, and all of the next, which wasSunday, they faced it; and they came at last, reluc-tantly, to the only answer there was.

They would shut the pit to M ay wheat. A nd any-one who had sold phantom wheat for May deliveryand was unable on demand to produce it should be letoff at a price to be determined by a special committee.

T hi s had never been done before. I n all the daysof the Board of Trade, through panics and corners, ithad never been done. Y et there was nothing else todo. "Unless you shut up/' said J. P., "you will blowup." And that was true.

Dreadwind heard of this action before it was pub-




lished. H e had been anxiously watching. After din-ner Sunday evening he said to C ordelia: "Be not

surprised at anything tomorrow.""Can you tell me?" she asked."I can tell you what will happen on the Board of

T ra d e ," he said. "N othin g. A notice will be postedon the bulletin board . And th at is what it will say.Noth ing shall happen. H ow this will affect yourfather I cannot imagine."

Five minutes before the opening of the pit on Mon-day morning Dreadwind joined Cordelia in the Board,of T rade gallery. " I almost think it had been better Ito tell him ," he said. "T here is still time ."

"N o , wait," she said.They had decided the night before to let the event

weave it own pattern.

At first there was apparently nothing strange in thescene below them. But as the minutes passed— one,two, three—anyone who knew how an excited wheatmarket should come open must have been extremelyoblivious not to notice how wrong the omens were.Where were those with glinting eyes and tautenednerves who should now be massed within the pit, gath-

ered on the rim of it, overflowing all around, ready atthe sound of a gong to rip the air apart with sound?Where were those who should be running to and frobetween the pit and every other point, bringing newsand last instructions? One minute yet until the open-ing and the pit was hard ly one-third full. The menalready gathered were not tense and poised; they were

dilatory and apathetic. They stood in little groups




talking toge ther. A nd on the dial above the pit whereprice changes are recorded was the sign of Septem-

ber wheat— S E P. W here was the sign of M A Y ?N ob od y was interested in September wheat. A ll thegambling was in M ay wheat. T he great corner withthe Bank of England behind it and Absalom Weaverastride of it was in May wheat.

And the sign of May had disappeared 1

N on e of this had W eav er noticed. Bo th his mind

and his eyes were in distant focus. H e stood in hisplace at the center of the pit. Once he glanced uneasilyat the clock and then at the thin fringe of men aroundhim. Still he was not warned.

The gong struck.




bidding nine dollar a bushel for M ay wheat! M ark itup there. M ay wheat is nine dollars. Pu t it up ."

Many were now turning away, some with expres-sions of disgust, others with morbid faces. H ewheeled once all around, sustaining the buying gestureof the extended fingers and inturned palms, and shout-ed for the last time:

"Ten/ I bid ten dollars a bushel for May wheat.All you've got."

A committee arrived . Four men pushed their wayauthoritatively into the pit and surrounded Weaver.H e did not resist, for he was through. They led himout of the pit. On the top step his feet stumbled andalmost he had fallen; but they held him up and broughthim to the gate where Cordelia and Dreadwind werewaiting. One of the four whispered to D readw ind :

"G et him home. Keep him away from here. H islamp is out."Cordelia walked on one side of him and Dread-

wind on the other, anxiously; he declined support fromeither of them. W hen they were outside Dreadwindsignaled for a cab. The old man shook his head,pulled away from them and plunged alone into the

traffic. From his manner it was evident he had a des-tination and an errand both. They caught up withhim and walked as before, one on each side, a littlesurprised that he knew his own way and wondering athis air of purpose.

At the door of the La Salle Hotel he turned in.There in the big ballroom several hundred farmers

were assembled. They represented a national grain




"Some of you know me," he said. " I am AbsalomWeaver."

A cheer broke forth. Those who did not know himknew what he was. A wheat-pit gambler on the farm-er's side is a crossroad's hero . M ore than that, he isan inverted sign, a contradiction, an angel of darknessfallen upw ard. News of him travels weirdly. Therewas hardly a farmer in the country who by this time

had not heard or read some legend of him. Out of thecheering his name was lifted up. W ords of rude praiseand encouragement were howled at him. The presid-ing officer shrugged his shoulders and sat down.

W eaver laid his hand on the tumult. Instantly itceased. H is manner chilled them. The notion thathe had come to show himself and make a speech was

succeeded by a sense of original tragedy transacting.And it was a little unreal, as natural drama is, withoutsetting or perspective. H e was seen to be touched withtha t madness which belongs to prophets. I t makespeople uneasy. It must be staged or have a paintedhistory; then it is real.

Dreadwind's description of the scene at this moment

may have overemphasized its dramatic value. T hatwas as he saw and felt it. T o him it was real in alldimensions. W eaver, by an act of rhetorical suspense,by simply holding one cold gesture beyond all expecta-tion, to which you add the strange effect of that un-seeing expression peculiar to morbid long-sightedness,stretched his audience to almost the point of groaning.

A voice—it might have been that of man or woman—cried hysterically: "W hat is it ? "



178 SATAN'S BUSHEL

Then he spoke in a low penetrating tone."Wheat," he said, "is ten dollars a bushel."

The tension snapped; the audible reaction was astupid titter . T ha t was natura l enough. N o one knewwhat he meant. I t was possibly a verbal hoax. Andsome relief from the suspense was a reflex necessity.But it moved Weaver to anger.

"L au gh !" he said. "Laugh. You have learnednothing since you were called dust feet two thousand

years ago in Greece. W heat is ten dollars a bushel. Icome to tell you this—to tell you I, Absalom Weaver,in the market place this morning offered that price forall the May wheat in the world and there was none tosell me a peck of it— to tell you I am banished fromthe pit for having done this, that the pit is closed toboth buyers and sellers because the price is beyond the

con trol of your enemies— and you laugh ! Simple dustfeet! Docile dust feet! Do you know what I amtalking abou t? D o you care? W ha t is it you know?The speculator who sells your wheat before it is grown— do you know what he sells? H e sells your labor.D o you know how he sells it? H e sells it at auction.A few hundred speculators sell the labor of three mil-

lion farmers— at auction! D o you understand? Thepharaohs buying and selling slaves did nothing more.A ll you want of a slave is his labo r. Only now it isa little disguised. Therefore, silly dust feet, you donot see it. They pretend to auction off your wheat,not your labor, and this idle distinction deceives you;but it is the same thing. You do not see it."

H e paused and focused his eyes at them. Voices,




not many, called: "Aye, aye. W e see it. . . . Yes.. . . Go on."

"Do you buy the labor of others at auction?"W eaver continued. "A plow is labor, as a bushel ofwheat is labor. W hen you buy a plow do you buy it atauction ? Or do you say, when you buy a plow, 'Whatwill you take for it ? ' The price of the plow is fixed bythose who have learned to sell the ir own labor. Theytell you this is necessary. They tell you it is necessary

to fix the price of everything you buy and then to auc-tion off your labor, the sweat of your face, for whatit will bring—and you believe them.

"W hy do they sell your produce at auction? W hydo a few hundred speculators thus appoint themselvesto sell your labor? W hy, for gain. There is noother reason. They sell your wheat before you sow it.

They sell it while you tend it. Then when you reap itthey say to you, 'There is too much wheat. There isa surplus. You have made more breadstuff than peo-ple want.' And with saying this they beat you downuntil you give up your wheat at a price below that atwhich they have already sold it. And you believe themwhen they say this is necessary."

Voices: " N o ! N o ! W e don 't believe it. It isn'tso."

"You do ," said W eaver. "You may not know it, butyou do. The chains of bondage are imaginary. W hatholds the bondsman is his fear. You are afraid. If inone instant you could overthrow the auction and de-stroy those who all these years have been selling away

your labor, would you dare? You would be afraid-




OThey are about to be self-destroyed. The Lord hathset them in your hand. Did you know it? I find yousinging songs of deliverance. I find you praying.They neither sing nor pray. T o save themselves theyclose the auction, shut up the wheat pit which theyhave made you believe was an economic necessity,calling it now a patriotic duty to do so, and here ye sitby the rivers of Babylon twanging the harp of despair.When they are saved they will open the pit again.

They are not afraid. I tell you all this and ye laugh."Directly in front of Weaver a gaunt man rose up.He was made in Weaver's image, had somewhat of hismanner, and spoke in a strong voice without effort.

"W e did not laugh ," he said. "N ot at that. Sayno more about it. You tell us many things we know.T ell us something we don't know. W hat shall we do

with our surplus whea t? H ow shall we dispose of it?Tell us that."

"And you say you do not believe them," saidW eaver, full of scorn. "W hat shall you do with oursurplus ? You ask me that and still say you do not be-lieve them. H ea r m e! There is no surplus. The renever was a surplus. Where is it if there ever was ? I

have held in my hands some grains of wheat as old asthe pyram ids. If ground into meal they would stillmake excellent bread. W hea t is imperishable. Sincethe beginning of civilization man has been producing itdiligently. W hy have we no store of it? All tha t manhas been able to produce of it in thousands of yearshas been eaten up, saving only seed for the next crop.

Never since Abraham came out of Ur to farm in the




land of Shinar would there have been, if one cropfailed, more than six and a half bushels between manand starvation. And you talk of a surplus! The re isonly the idea of a surplus. The idea of it is the invis-ible chain tha t binds you to the auction. I t is the fearwith which they have clothed your neck. I t is themythical stone they have condemned you to roll uphillforever. The re is no surplus. Yet you are continuallyrunning from it, competing with one another to deliver

yourselves into the hands of the auctioneers lest oneshall come last with a bushel of wheat that cannot besold at all. And there is no surplus. The utmost therecan ever be is a little wheat over from a fat year to lieagainst the want of a lean year. You call this asurplus?"

Th e gaunt man rose again. "W hat shall we do with

that," he asked,u

that little over from the fat year?For we see that in the fat years we are worse o^ thanever, the little wheat that shall be over uneaten leakinga low price for all that is eaten."

"Keep it," said W eaver. "Keep what is over untilthe world's belly swells with hunger. Then it will pay .Joseph kept grain seven years in a mud storehouse. I t

does not spoil. I know what you will say. You willsay you cannot keep it. You have borrow ed money atthe bank. You are called upon to pay it back. There-fore you must sell that bushel which breaks the priceof the whole crop. They are demanding it in the mar-ket place. I say, do not grow that Satan 's bushel. Secto it. But if it be you have grown it, or your neighbor

hath produced it, and they plow your backs too hard



182 SATAN'S BUSHEL

to make you give it up against yourselves a t the auction. . . if you cannot keep it"— here he paused to shapehis period—"then kill it, and the Lord forgive you."

At this confused and contending murmurs rose.Then voices began to ask : "W ha t of the w ar? "

H is answer was: "They who sell the phantom wheat,who conjure up a non-existing surplus, who say the pricefreely made at auction is what produces wheat, andnow suddenly deny this, now stop the price and shut thepit to save themselves and name it patriotism— I say,let them feed the war. Be not deceived. This war ofyours is the oldest war there is."

He probably did not mean in any case to go on.His thought must have culminated in that apostropheto the power of forgiveness. And this at the sametime was his own cry, his owft defence. Dreadwind

was the only person present who could have so under-stood it. Kill the surp lus! Kill it, as he had done, andthe Lord forgive them all!

Until then his audience had been in a state of vagueperplexity, inclined as a whole to be sympathetic, yetwith its emotions divided in diso rder. But suddenlyhe had gone too far. A change took place when the

question was asked: "W ha t about the w ar ?" T h attouched a dangerous basic feeling. H is answer grosslyoffended it. Instantly, therefore, it crystallized againsthim. H is theme was swept away. In a far corner ofthe room a tiny, timorous hiss was heard. Th en aloud one. W ith no more warning than th at the audi-ence raised itself as one many-headed adder and bur-

ried him in hisses, imprecations breaking through.




One would think he must have known; that he had

been deliberately heedless. But he was amazed andlooked about him in a stricken manner, unable to com-prehend it.

C ordelia was running up the aisle. She reached himjust as he turned away with a weary sign of defeat.As far as the steps down from the platform he wasall right. It was well tha t Dreadw ind met them there ,

however, for the old man began to lurch. They sup-ported him out and he did not decline their strength.H e leaned heavily upon them, wh ispering: "Quickly,quickly!"

Here Dreadwind omitted the harrowing details.H ow they got him home he did not say. After havingbeen silent several minutes he skipped all that and

began again with what happened next day:About two o'clock he was sitting with Cordelia inthe kitchen. One hates to pass that simple statement.I can see what they were doing. They were at thetable, leaning on it. H e r hands were lying in his andher eyes were wide and dry. They had not spoken aword for some time. W hat were they thinking?

Noth ing . T h a t would be true of the man, I am sure.He was probably tracing the pattern on the oilcloth,over and over, and a tune he had not remembered foryears was running around in his head. W ate r wasdripping in the black iron sink. A three-color posterlady in tights was looking down at them from the wallwith an eye of skeptical wonder. I t was very still.

So Dreadwind was sitting with Cordelia in thekitchen. The re was a heavy knock at the doo r. H e



SAT AN 'S BU SH EL 185

Weaver's room, opened it, and stood a little aside.The officers came on the threshold and looked— at a

long horizontal figure covered with a sheet. The cap-tain went in. H e turned down the sheet to uncoverthe face, put it back, and came out, his polished militaryboots with their silly spurs making a fatuous ineptsound on the bare floor.

"Case closed," he said, and abruptly departed withhis men, whistling on a dry breath.

Thus ended the earthly phase of Absalom Weaver.Now the other begins. And whether the other wasreal in itself or existed fantastically in the minds oftwo human beings is a question I wish to leave as Ifound it. I have my own reluctant opinion; it is ir-relevant. I cannot say for certain what Dreadwind'sopinion was. Sometimes I thought he believed it ;

then again I thought he didn't. N o . H e must havebelieved it really. A t every crucial point the faith of itlay in his conduct. I t does not matter what he thought.

The old man's faculties appear to have been clearto the end. I mean to say, clear so far as they couldbe, bent as they were to his fanatical purpose. Firs t,he legally authorized Dreadwind to gather up his as-

sets— that is to say his profits in the wheat m arke t; andthen he gave simple, explicit directions as to whatshould be done with the money.

"As far as it will go ," he said, "do with it as Josephdid in Egypt. In time of plenty he bought grain. D oyou remember? H e gathered grain as the sands of thesea. Stretch the money. Each year until it is lost buy

wheat in the first glut of the harvest, the new wheat,




in the months of July and September, as the farmersbring it wet to the auction and dump it.n

"Say that again," said Moberly, breaking in."In the pit," I said, "what you call July wheat is

the first of the fall-sown crop . September wheat isthe first of the spring-sown crop. Those are the two

new wheat months in the pit. Three-quarters of thetotal wheat crop is rushed to market during the harvestperiod and sold for what it will bring as July or Sep-tember wheat. It is the grow er's folly. There is aglut of wheat at this time. Ev erything overflows andthe price is depressed."

"Yes, yes," said M oberly irritably. "W e know all

that. W ha t did he mean about Joseph? T h at 's whatI'm asking. Joseph made a corner in grain, didn 't he?Isn't that what he did?"

"You Board of Trade people say it," I answered."Loo k at Joseph , you say. H e was the first greatgrain speculator. H e saved Eg ypt. So it was then;so it is now. Grain speculation is historically neces-

sary. W ell, maybe so. I wonder. The fact is thatJoseph did a thing you never heard of one doing on theBoard of T rade. If you heard of one doing it youwould call in his credit and send for his heirs to havehim examined in lunacy."

"What is that?" Moberly asked."Joseph bought grain when there was too much of

it, because there was too much of it. Then he sold



SA TA N 'S BU SH EL 187

it when there was famine. W ha t does the modern

grain speculator do when he thinks there is too muchwheat? H e sells it. W hat does he do when he thinksthere isn't enough? H e buys it."

"R o t," said M oberly. " It works out."" It wouldn't have worked in Eg yp t," I said. "I f

there had been a Board of Trade and no Joseph inEgypt what would have happened? During the seven

fat years the price of wheat would have been so low,with all the speculators selling it because there was toomuch, that people would have had to stop growing it.Then when the seven lean years came the quotation forwheat on the Board of Trade might have been a thou-sand dollars a bushel because there wasn't any andEgypt had perished."

"Stop quarreling," said Goran. "W ho cares whatJoseph did? Nobody knows. What happened to yourprecious lovers? I want to know tha t."

There would be two versions of what Weaver's

death did to the lovers. One I can give. That isDreadwind 's. The other— well, a woman never tells.You cannot be sure she could if she would or that sheknows. She seems to have no verbal curiosity abouther soul's experience.

For Cordelia, whose life hitherto had been dedi-cated wholly to daughterhood, turning from the father

of her being to embrace the miraculous stranger musthave been a tremendous emotional act. Perhaps she




had not achieved it perfectly and was keeping fire ontw o altars. There is the other possibility that she had

overachieved it and was touched with remorse at nothaving w aited when the end was so near. Or youmay believe that the power of the father to commandher spirit was even greater in death than it was in life.

What Dreadwind said very simply was that the partof her that was W eaver's seemed to go with him. H esaid it with a kind of wonder and not at all as if hewished it otherwise. W ha t he did not say, though Iknew it to be true, was that the part of her that sur-vive d for him was less than he had before. I t w asand it was not. H o w shall it be said ? She wa schanged. H er spirit w as absent. She had but onecompelling thought, which was to act on a revelationthat occurred to her as W eaver's life departed. T h iswas irrational. Y et to all circumstances of reality shereacted passively in a rational way notwithstanding;and with Dreadwind she was both infinitely distant andexquisitely near, like someone you love asleep in yourarms and dreaming.

Everything else now turns upon that revelation.

After having imparted to Dreadwind very clearlythose extraordinary instructions as to how the moneyshould be lost, W eav er said a weird thing. W ith theebb of his strength he said that until the money waslost in the way he directed, all of it to the last dollar,his spirit could not leave the earth. I t would abidehere in suspense. I t would dwell in a place he seem ed

to see and evidently meant to describe; the end wassudden and he failed to get it out.




But C ordelia saw it. She was holding his hand. H ewas already dead. They were standing at oppositesides of the bed — Dreadwind and C ordelia. Shestarted, her brows contracted violently, and she closedher eyes. W hen she opened them again they were verywide, her eyebrows were lifted, and she was lookingfar away.

"A tree!" she whispered."Where is it?" Dreadwind asked."A tre e! " she said again. "W hat a strange tre e! ""Where?" asked Dreadwind anxiously, for it seemed

to him very important to know.H is voice disturbed her. She closed her eyes again,

then looked at him with a bothered expression."I don't know," she said slowly, remembering his

question.The thought that instantly obsessed her was to findthe tree. It was more than a thought. It had theforce of a psychic compulsion. Dreadwind could imag-ine that if she had been alone she would have goneimmediately forth into the wide world with that imagein her eyes. Almost he could believe tha t alone, walk-

ing in a trance over the face of the earth, she wouldhave found it some time.But she was not alone. H er anxiety included him

so implicitly that they never once spoke of it in ques-tion. It was not tha t she should go to the tree; it wasthat they should go and be with it, that the three ofthem should dwell together again in that other place

to be discovered. How she should have known, ifshe did know, that it would be possible for Dreadwind



190 SA TA N ' S B U SH EL

to do this and at the same time carry out Weaver'sinstructions, is immaterial. I t was possible; and it

may never have occurred to her to ask whether it wasor not.

But there were certain frustrating facts. Dread -wind laid them before her.

First, was the fact that with the whole civilizedworld in a state of war it was not feasible for peopleto move about freely on an errand that could not be

explained—and the tree, which she described minutely,was clearly a foreign tree . They would have to find itin a strange land.

Secondly, while the war continued it would not bepossible to carry out W eaver's instructions in the wheatmarket, for already the Government was taking stepsto fix the price of wheat, thereby suspending specula-

tion altogether.Third ly, there was something else. H e wondered if

ishe would understand. There was a certain thing menhad to do in their own way, without women. I t wouldbe necessary on this account for him to leave her. I t[would not take long; but it was very pressing.

She did understand; at least she accepted his reasons

gravely and without comment.But when he said, therefore, they would be married

at once and that she should take his apartment for herown and wait for him there where nothing could touchher, she listened with a tense, thoughtful expressionand shook her head.

"H e re ," she said. " I shall wait here. W ait for

him as for the rain," she added musingly.



S A T A N ' S B U S H E L 191!

"But we wil l be married at once," he said.Again she shook her head.

" I do no t know w hat m arria ge is ," she said. " Ionly know that when we are married it shall be all of

m e . "H e protested, argued, insis ted. H e would m arr y

the t iniest fragment of her, the shadow, the memoryan d tho ug ht of he r, and be satisfied. H e re pr ese nte dit in a practical l ight, a romantic l ight, in the light ofhis nee d. She was plea sed . H e could see in he r eyes

that she was coming nearer, slowly nearer, as with agreat effort of longing, but all the time she kept shak-ing he r hea d. T he n suddenly he lost he r. She w assnatched back.

" W o u ld it w ere all of me no w ," she said. Saying it

she dropped her head on her arms and wept bi t terly.;When he would have touched her consolingly she

gently repulsed him.Thus the father prevailed in spi te oi them.



CHAPTER XI

WEA V ER'S affairs were easy to settle. H is estateconsisted entirely in credit balances with Board

of Trade members; and when the money was all gath-ered up and put in bank it amounted to nearly a million

dollars. Dreadwind was surprised. H e had no ideathe salvage would be so large.

Then he bade Cordelia good-bye.She took from around her neck a thin silver chain of

very old workmanship, with a locket attached, and putit over his head, dropping the locket inside his collar.

"Bring it back to me unopened," she said.She stood with her back to the kitchen table, her

hands grasping the edges of it, her body inclined alittle toward him.

"You will find me here like this. I shall hear youcoming. The door will not be locked. Open it with-out knocking. You will think I had never stirred ."

W hat he did in the war I don't know. I think itwas the tank corps. H ating publicity, he enlisted byan assumed nam e, or I should have looked it up . H emerely said he went in at a place where he could counton a prompt discharge when the show was over. Any-how, he returned with a slight limp.

When he opened the door, with a sudden panic andfaintness of heart, there she stood, exactly as he hadseen her last, only a little more inclined toward him,

192



SATAN'S BUSHEL 193;

her lips parted, a high light in her eyes. She was

wholly present at that moment. Her spirit was there

and touched him. She looked him once over with

swift anxiety and threw her arms about his neck, at

the same time exploring him for the silver locket which,

when it was found, she took back.

His ecstasy in that phase was brief. Almost at once

she changed again, her eyes once more had that look

of far-seeing, and there was an air of impatience about

her.

Now, two things remained to be done in order that

a third might happen. The first thing was to arrange

that Weaver's money should be lost in the wheat pit,

agreeably to his instructions. The next was to find the

tree in which his spirit was supposed to be lingering

Then it was only to abide the sequel.

There was a broker on the Board of Trade whom

Dreadwind trusted as he would trust himself—even

more. I do not know his name. He appears to have

been a man in whose house gambling in wheat was

neither prohibited nor encouraged. It took its place.

His true interest lay rather in the handling of actual

grain as a dealer. He was an ideal broker for the

purpose, since no one would expect him to be handling

an irrational gambling account in the phantom stuff of

the pit, and his business in actual grain was more than

large enough to conceal the other. Dreadwind went

to this broker and gave him the strangest order that

was ever placed on the Board of Trade. It was an

order, you understand, to lose a million dollars in the

pit. Only of course it was not said that way. Specif*



394 SATAN'S BUSHEL

ically, it was an order to buy July and Septemberwheat in the pit, on the glut of the harvest, at the high-

est prices possible, until the money was all gone.When it was lost then the account was to close andDreadw ind was to be notified. T he broker stared athim stupidly.

" I know," said Dreadwind. " It 's perfectly mad.I can't explain it and I can't be here to do it myself.

T h a t' s why I bring it to you. Imagine it to be an

affair of the conscience and let it go at that.""Pity to wallow that kind of conscience around inthe wheat pit," said the broker. However, he ac-cepted the commission, and tha t was that. Theythough t it was. N o one had the faintest doubt asto what would happen to the money. W eaver ha dn 't;Dreadwind hadn't; the broker hadn't.

Well, now Cordelia and Dreadwind set out to-gether. All they had to go on was her description ofthe tree . She had never seen one like it. Neither hadDreadw ind. Yet neither of them doubted its exist-ence; and Cordelia was sure she would know it atsight. She led the way. I mean it was he r impulsealways tha t guided them. And when at length they

had found that kind of tree they were no nearer thanwhen they started; for of the teak species there aremillions scattered through the forests of Asia. Fancythe chance of finding on e! Of finding a certain onewith not the slightest physical notion of where it was!It seems often true in human experience that the senseof probability is suspended. Something else goes on

working in its place. W e cannot imagine what th at



S A T A N ' S B U S H E L 1951

is. There are those who prefer the supernatural ex-planation, which leaves it as it was. Others say there

is a vast region of the human mind yet to be explored.It has faculties both vestigal and rudimentary whichwe use unaw ares. T hat may be so.

There were times when Cordelia lost all sense ofdirection and then they drifted in an aimless way,merely looking. Then by one impulse they would go amonth's journey in a straight line, looking neither righ t

nor left, only to be disappointed again at the end.And yet a chart of their movements—Dreadwind hadplotted one and showed it to me—clearly revealed ablind tendency from every angle to converge upon acertain point.

For some time Dreadwind had been silent, smokingslowly, his thoughts dwelling upon their travels, as I

knew from now and then a wistful smile upon his faceor an involuntary contraction of the grief muscles inhis forehead.

"T h a t's all," he said suddenly. "You passed usseveral times, you say. Therefo re you know. I t tookus nearly three years to find it."

"How long?" I asked.

"Nearly three years.""Then it wasn't true?""What wasn't true?""W eav er's notion about his spirit. Three years,

you say. W ell? H is spirit ought long ago to havedep arted. And if it had, or you thought it had , youwould not continue here."

"Oh! I see," he said, his puzzled look breaking



196 SATAN'S BUSHEL

away. "You assume that the money has been los t.Of course. Anyone would think so. I haven't told

you. I t sounds incredible. The money has not beenlos t. On the contrary, it has multiplied. I could showyou the broker's rep or ts. The first year half of it waslost. The next year the surviving half increased it-self threefold. And this year— I've just heard— ithas doubled. I t now amounts to about three milliondollars."

"And the tree meanwhile is flourishing,'* I com-mented.H e looked at me steadily, nodding his head. " I

don't suppose anyone ever tried to lose money in thewheat pit ," he said. " I t may be in the natu re of chancethat it's as hard to lose as to win if that's what youset out to do. Of course . . . I might . . . N o, Icouldn't do tha t. W e shall have to see."

What it was he might do he did not say and I didnot ask. One is perm itted to guess.

It was strange that Weaver's money had not beenlost. But you see, in placing it Dreadw ind had inmind not the losing of it primarily but the effect Wea-ver wished it to have in the pit, which was to supportthe price of wheat in the glut of the harvest; and ithad been demonstrated to everyone's amazement thatmoney employed in that way need not be lost. I t wasthe Joseph thing over again—buying grain when therewas too much of it because there was too much, and,beho ld! it turned out to pay . Yes, but on the o therside, if Dreadwind now wished more to lose the moneythan to prove Weaver's theory he could very easily do



SATA N'S B U SH EL 197

so. Any experienced wheat gambler would know howto do that. Superstition aside, one could do it with

certainty.Dreadwind 's dilemma is clear. H e was torn be-

tween an impulse to break the spell that enthralledthem both and a powerful sentiment of veneration forthe form and meaning of it. I have said once that Icould not be sure that in his mind he believed it atall, and that yet he unconsciously did, for believing was

implicit in his acts. H ere it was. H e would notchange those first instructions to the broker in any wayto place the money in greater jeopardy.

The re he is. I leave him to you. A man living ina bamboo hut with the woman he loves and cannotpossess, unable to destroy the invisible thing that keepsthem apar t



C H A P T E R X I I

N IG H T 'S tale," I said, looking around thetable. "Daw n is breaking. So it was in Burma

when Dreadwind finished."Sylvester and Selkirk looked first at the sky over

the sea and then at their watches. Goran stretched .M oberly sat quite still. H e was the first to speak.

"H ow long ago was th a t? " he asked. "W hen wereyou with Dreadwind, I mean?"

"Fou r months ag o," I said. "A little more. Fo urand a half."

"They are there still?" he asked.

"Yes," I said."Waiting for old Weaver's money to be lost?""Yes."I noticed that he framed these questions carefully

and I wondered, too , at their sincerity. I had notexpected him to be the one most impressed.

Chairs were pushed back."W ai t a minute," said Goran. "I'v e a feeling you

have left something out. Something about C ordelia.Didn't you see her before you left?"

"Yes.""Alone?"I hesitated for an answer and marveled at Goran's

subtle penetration."You did of course," he said, no t waiting. "A nd

198




I have a feeling that she spoke with you to some pur-pose. That is what is missing."

" I suspect you know too much about w omen," I said."Only that they are unknowable," he answered.

"Can you tell us what she said?"Th is was what she said. Goran apparently had

already guessed it, not the words, but the sense. Shehad been with us for breakfast. I t was nine o'clockwhen we were ready to sta rt for the boat landing. She

meant to go with us, and we were on the verandawaiting for Dreadw ind. H e called out that he wouldovertake us; he had a letter to finish that he wishedme to post. So we walked on through the forest with-out him— C ordelia and I. As we passed the tree Inoticed she did not look at it; and her not doing sowas rather pointed, since she must have been aware

that I was regarding it with deep curiosity."T he day will be very ho t," she said. "I 'm sorry

to have kept you up all night. M r. Dreadwind toldyou, did he no t, it was I who wished you to know every-thing?"

"Yes," I answered, "he told me tha t. And heseemed a little surprised," I added.

She ignored the provocative part of my statementand was silent for several minutes.

"Are you familiar with the wheat pit?" she asked.I said that I was."Is it so difficult to lose money there if that is one's

real inten tion?" she asked. As I did not reply atonce she ad de d: "You know what I mean."

"I know what you mean," I said. "N o , I shouldn'thave thought it would be so difficult. But it 's ha rd




to say. There is no experience, you see. Never be-fore has anyone tried to lose money there."

That was as far as I was willing at the time to sat-isfy Goran 's curiosity. There was more. And therewas the sign. I did not tell him of that either. H ewas regarding me with a superior indulgent smile;and when he understood that I meant to tell no morehe said : "Enough. M en are so stupid! Th ey don 'tdeserve their luck, now do they? W e never knowwhat we want. Only the woman does."

What else passed there on the forest path beforeDreadwind overtook us is no longer inhibited, andmay as well be set down at once. M y reply as to thedifficulty of losing money in the wheat pit left her dis-satisfied, though she did not say so. She said nothing.After a little while I said: "Why did you so particu-larly wish me to know ?" She did not answer, there-fore I added: "I ask because I haven't been told howI shall tre at it. I mean, whether to trea t it as if Ihad never heard it . • . or " I stopped, hardlyknowing myself what I wished to say. I had only theintuition that somewhere in all this lay a veiled pur-pose; also the feeling that I was expected to senseit. And the assumption that I am a subtle personcauses me always a little irritation, precisely becauseI am not.

"You are going back," she said."Yes," I said. "Directly back."It was then, as I said in the beginning, that she drew

me. a little aside. W e had come to the landing andDreadwind was not yet in sight. She stood with her




hands behind her, the sun in her face, her eyes wideopen; and I saw for myself the expression that had so

long baffled Dreadwind. W hen she spoke she was notas before. She was not quite herself. Her wordswere stilted. "In a far place," she said, "by the water ,you will be alone among many people. Fou r men willmeet you as if by chance. They will take you to supwith them. Tell them, and tell no one else until then.Only be sure they are the right men. You will think ofa sign."

Then Dreadwind came with his letter and bade megood-bye.

None of this did I tell at the table.W e broke up. The others were for going to bed

and spoke of meeting at lunch time; but Sylvesterasked me to go for a walk. I went. W e had takena long turn down the boardwalk and were watchingthe sun rise out of the sea when he said, most abruptly:

"I am that broker.""What broker?" I asked, unable for an instant to

make any connection of ideas."The one that has old Weaver's money under

Dreadwind's instructions," he said. " I thought all thetime it was Dreadwind's own. H e told me only whathe appears to have repeated to you—that he couldn'texplain it and I might regard it as an affair of con-science. All of that W eaver stuff was new to me.'*

"How extraordinary!" I exclaimed."But what on earth prompted you to tell the story

in tha t company?" he asked. H is tone was disap-proving.




"I was prom pted. T hat's all I can say," I answered."Well, you've done it all right," he said.

"What do you mean?"" I mean you've turned the cards face up. T hat's

the end of Weaver's money.""I begin to see," I said; "but go on.""Didn't you notice a change in Moberly's face to-

ward the end.""I f I did ," I said, " I failed to construe it. W hat

w as i t ? r '"You might no t have noticed it," he said. "You

were telling the story. Everyone else did .""But what was it?""It was that look any hunting animal has, man of

beast, when the image of prey falls suddenly upon theeye. Look. W eave r's three million dollars in the

wheat pit. You have told Moberly the money is there.You have told him how it is played in July and Septem-ber wheat—not only how it has been played but how itwill continue to be played until it is lost. You haveshown him all the cards. Now you see. H e will getit. H e will not rest until he does."

"May you be right," I said; which surprised him,

for tha t was not his state of feeling. I understoodwhat his reaction was. H e had none of Goran's senti-mental insight. H e was deeply shocked by the factthat a matter left secretly to his care and responsibilityin terms of unlimited trust had been rudely exposed.Now he was helpless. T he W eaver-Dreadwind ac-count would be slaughtered in his hands and he could

not save it. A broker would feel that way; a brokerlike Sylvester would.




"A nd Goran was righ t," I answered. "A womanknows what she w ants."

T h at was too much. H e regarded me with gloomydisfavor not at all concealed, and so we parted.

I did not see them again— not then. Th ey wenttheir way and I went mine. W hen I thought of it Idevoutly wished that Sylvester's foreboding should notbe disappointed; also that he would be unable to com-municate with Dreadwind, who might be tempted to

protect the money. I learned afterward that he hadtried to get word to Dreadwind, but it was too late.

The next August it occurred that I was passingthrough Chicago and the impulse came to me suddenlyto stop and call on Sylvester. H ow easily one putsaside what is not one's own. I at least am tha t kindof person . Although Dreadwind 's affair interested meenormously I had not thought of it for several weeks.I might have been half around the world before think-ing of it again. And here I was, in the city of thewheat pit, where the sequel would be, if one there was.

Sylvester was too busy to see anyone, they told meat his office door; it was with much difficulty that Igot my name to him. H e sent out for me immediately.

I found him standing at the grain ticker in his pri-va te office. H e looked at me as I came in and turnedhis eyes again to the tape . I stood for several minutesat his side, looking at it too. September wheat was

and the quotations were coming fast."Rather active," I said.

"Rather," he replied, dryly.The price was falling: 9 4 ^ . . . 9 4% . . . 94H



204 SATAN'S BUSH EL

. . . then back to 9434* I could imagine what was

going on in the wheat pit—how wild and excited it

was, how savage theuproar. In Sylvester's office, how-ever, there was no sound but the steady purr and gnashof the ticker.

"And the sellers seem to have it," I said."Don' t you know what is happening?" he asked.

"You ought to be interested. Moberly is shooting for

Weaver's money. He's got the hide. The re's only

a little of the tail left and he wants that too. See!"He crimped the tape at the last quotation for Septem-ber wheat, which was 94%. "When the price touches94, as it will, that will be tail and all. There I"

The very next quotation was 94. He flung the tapedown and turned away.

"Well ," he said, facing me suddenly. "How do you

like it?"" I am delighted," I said. "And don't let it run in

your head that I was a blundering idiot who brought a

tale to the wrong place."Then to comfort him I told him why. He listened

with a neutral air and at the end he grunted.Two months passed. I took no steps to satisfy my

curiosity, for by this time I had placed the Dreadwindromance in a field by itself, an irrational field, wherethe bit of superstition which survives in the most un-

believing of us might have its orgy out. The end

would disclose itself, I said, in its own way. And so

it did.

One evening in a London hotel, while I was dressing,a note was brought in. C ompliments of Mr. and Mrs.



SATAN'S BUSHEL 205

Dreadwind, and would I be pleased to dine with themin their rooms ? They were in the same hotel.

They greeted me as if I had rights in them—as shychildren bursting with a secret that you must not sus-pect the existence of but stumble upon amazedly in thedark . I t was no secret. Anyhow, it cannot be told.All the words about it are silly. You have to see it.I could hardly see anything else. And it was somethinga lone, selfish man ought not to be permitted to see.

For his own sake he ought not to see it. I t makes hisworld seem very empty for a while and it is neverquite the same again, even when he thinks he has gotwell over it.

They pressed me with food and wordless attentionsand laughed together at the little mishaps that cameof their anxiety to include me in their happiness; which

of course made me feel as one who sitteth outside thewall in gross darkness and hath no way of communion.They did speak of their plans. They were going toKansas to buy a farm—a certain farm, one they hadfastened their hearts upon—and make them a para-dise.

"A large farm ?" I asked. "T ell me about it ? "They were a little embarrassed and then smiled

toge ther. Of course. They knew nothing about thisfarm except that in the front yard was an apple treewith a bench around it, and that across and down theroad was a wheat field where a mystical experience hadbefallen them one morning in the dawn.

When I had made sure there were no untouchablerecollections I sa id : " I was with Sylvester the day




the last of the money was lost," and I was going onto describe the scene when suddenly a look of extremesurprise appeared on Dreadw ind's face. C ordelia was

gazing at me pensively. I turned it off abruptly.There was a silence.

"Then you knew Sylvester?" Dreadwind asked."Very well," I said."But I never told you he was the broker."T ha t was a tight place for me. I t was clear tha t

C ordelia and I knew more than Dreadwind. She wasstill gazing at me, more with wondering what I shouldsay than with any sign of uneasiness.

*'No, you didn't ," I said. "But you will recall thatas you were telling me the story out there in the bamboohut and came to the fact of the money having multi-plied itself incredibly you spoke of showing me thebroker's reports, as though I might look at them ifI cared to do so. W ell, some of them were lying thereopen on the table. Naturally I glanced at them, andI couldn't very well help seeing the broker's name inlarge type at the top of every sheet."

T hat passed. C ordelia smiled, not as one smileswhose anxiety is happily relieved but as if she wereamused.

"What I meant to ask," I said, "was how you knewwhen the end came?"

"W e knew it at once," said Dreadwind. "T he sameday."

" H o w ? ""By the shadow ," he said simply. Then he add ed :

"Sylvester sent a cable message, but it missed us on our



SATAN'S BUSHEL 207

way out. I first heard from him here in London on ly

two weeks ago."T he y bought the farm in Kansas. I have seen themthere many times. I hate to go because of what hap-pens to my own world when I see them together; andyet I cannot resist it.

Only a few days ago I met Goran again."Have you found out yet what was in that silver

locket?" he asked. H e meant the locket Cordelia gaveto Dreadwind when he went to war, with instructionsto bring it back unopened. Goran had already asked,me this question three times.

"W heat," I said. "T w o grains of wh eat.""D on 't try to be stupid," he said. "W hat tw o

grains of wheat ? I have guessed, but I want to know

for sure."I told him.Cordelia went back and go t tw o grains of ripe w heat

from the very stalk at which she, Dreadwind andWeaver knelt down in the dawn to witness one ofN ature's m ost beautiful acts. T he y were in the locket.A nd they were planted on the D readw ind farm. I

have myself eaten bread from them . I t is served onwedding anniversaries.

T H E E N D

stan's bushel - garrett

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