He decided that the mysterious
Missourian must be some strange sort of intellectual giant. He was sure
that one who could sit quietly reading hour after hour in such a lonely
isolated place could be of no ordinary clay. As he stood in the deep
shadows inside the old building and stared at the man he was trying to find
courage to approach, a citizen of Bidwell named Dick Spearsman came to the
station and going inside, talked to the telegraph operator. Steve trembled
with anxiety. The man who had come to the station was an insurance agent
who also owned a small berry farm at the edge of town. He had a son who had
gone west to take up land in the state of Kansas, and the father thought of
visiting him. He came to the station to make inquiry regarding the railroad
fare, but when Steve saw him talking to Hugh, the thought came into his
mind that John Clark or Thomas Butterworth might have sent him to the
station to make an investigation of the truth of the statements he had made
in the bank. "It would be like them to do it that way," he muttered to
himself. "They wouldn't come themselves. They would send some one they
thought I wouldn't suspect. They would play safe, damn 'em."
Trembling with fear, Steve walked up and down in the empty factory. Cobwebs
hanging down brushed against his face and he jumped aside as though a hand
had reached out of the darkness to touch him.
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