There were other news items, many of them. Old John Runnels was still chief of police; Tom Fitch, the hardware man, was the new mayor; Buck Severance, my one-time chum in the High School, was now chief of the fire department, having won his spurs--or rather, I should say, his red helmet and silver trumpet--at the fire which had destroyed the Blickerman Department Store.
"Which one? We've got three of them now, if you please, and one's a National."
"Something right funny about that, Bert," Barton commented. "The old bank is rocking along and doing a little business in farm mortgages and note-shaving at the old stand, same as usual, but it's got a hoodoo. The other banks do most of the commercial business--all of it, you might say; still, they say Geddis and old Abner Withers are getting richer and richer every day."
"No; and that's another of the funny things. Her engagement with young Copper-Money was broken off--nobody knew just how or why--shortly after your--er--shortly after the trouble at the bank three years and a half ago. Agatha's out West somewhere now--in a sanitorium, I believe. Her health has been rather poor for the last year or so."
This was news indeed. As I had known her as girl and woman, Agatha Geddis had always been the picture of health. I put up a fervent little prayer that her particular sanitorium might not prove to be in the vicinity of Denver. If it should be it meant another move for me.
"I didn't see the finish of the bank trouble before they buried me, did I, Barton?" I queried.
"You bet your life you didn't! There was the dickens to pay all around. Under the State law, as you probably know, the depositors' losses had to be made up, to the extent of twice the amount of the stockholdings, by the stockholders in the bank. When they came to count noses they found that Geddis and Withers hadn't done a thing but to quietly unload their bank stock here and there and everywhere, until they held only enough to give them their votes. There was a yell to raise the roof, but the stockholders of record had to come across. It teetotally smashed a round dozen of the best farmers in the county; and I heard, on the quiet, that it caught a good many outsiders who had been buying Farmers' stock at a bargain, among them this young Mr. Copper-Money who was going to marry Agatha--and didn't. Geddis and Withers played it mighty fine--and mighty low-down."