One by one they went along Hamilton Street to Zebe Wilson's
shop and stepped inside to repeat Steve Hunter's salutation. "Well, good
afternoon, Mr. Wilson," they said, "and how is the quality of leather you
are getting from the tanneries now?" Ed Hall, the last of the five who went
into the shop to repeat the formal and polite inquiry, barely escaped with
his life. Zebe Wilson threw a shoemaker's hammer at him and it went through
the glass in the upper part of the shop door.
Once when Tom Butterworth and John Clark the banker were talking of the new
air of importance he was assuming, and half indignantly speculated on what
he meant by his whispered suggestion of something significant about to
happen, Steve came along Main Street past the front door of the bank. John
Clark called him in. The three men confronted each other and the jeweler's
son sensed the fact that the banker and the rich farmer were amused by
his pretensions. At once he proved himself to be what all Bidwell later
acknowledged him to be, a man who could handle men and affairs. Having at
that time nothing to support his pretensions he decided to put up a bluff.
With a wave of his hand and an air of knowing just what he was about, he
led the two men into the back room of the bank and shut the door leading
into the large room to which the general public was admitted. "You would
have thought he owned the place," John Clark afterward said with a note of
admiration in his voice to young Gordon Hart when he described what took
place in the back room.
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