"Well, whatever happens we can't
lose much of anything," John Clark finally observed.
And over the bridge and out into Turner's Pike walked Steve Hunter, the
embryo industrial magnate. Across the great stretches of fields that lay
beside the road the wind ran furiously, tearing leaves off trees, carrying
great volumes of dust before it. The hurrying black clouds in the sky were,
he fancied, like clouds of smoke pouring out of the chimneys of factories
owned by himself. In fancy also he saw his town become a city, bathed in
the smoke of his enterprises. As he looked abroad over the fields swept by
the storm of wind, he realized that the road along which he walked would in
time become a city street. "Pretty soon I'll get an option on this land,"
he said meditatively. An exalted mood took possession of him and when
he got to Pickleville he did not go into the shop where Hugh and Allie
Mulberry were at work, but turning, walked back toward town in the mud and
the driving rain.
It was a time when Steve wanted to be by himself, to feel himself the one
great man of the community. He had intended to go into the old pickle
factory and escape the rain, but when he got to the railroad tracks, had
turned back because he realized suddenly that in the presence of the
silent, intent inventor he had never been able to feel big. He wanted to
feel big on that evening and so, unmindful of the rain and of his hat,
that was caught up by the wind and blown away into a field, he went along
the deserted road thinking great thoughts.
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