“If you want to do your own trading, you could do it through Haynes & Webster. But if you decide you want to gamble, that would be through me. My personal account. I would take your money and gamble with it, and at the end of a stated period, six months, a year, we cut up the profits.”
Abraham Lockwood smiled. “Not very businesslike, is it?”
“No. For all you know, I could use your money to gamble with, never risk a cent of my own, and still take half your profits.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“That’s what I knew you were thinking. But not if I told you what stocks I was speculating in. Then you’d know to the penny.”
“But if you told me the names of the stocks, I wouldn’t need you at all, would I?”
“Of course not. In this kind of transaction we have to trust each other. For example, if you turned over $5,000 I would then tell you the names of the stocks I was buying. But I would be trusting you not to speculate in them on your own. In other words, Locky, you could buy my information for $5,000, but trade on your own with a much larger sum of money.”
“I thought of that.”
“Naturally. And you might make a very large profit, much larger than I would make. But—that would end our association, and I hate to think what it would do to our friendship.”
“Of course. Then I take it that we can forget all about Haynes & Webster.”
“For the moment.”
“You and I would be partners? Equal partners?”
“No, not if we each put in the same amount of money. Sixty-forty. On a basis of $10,000, you would put up six thousand, and I would put up four. We would split the profits evenly.”
“You take 16% percent of my investment for your information. Isn’t that high?”
“I think it’s fair. It’s the only way I’d do it. My 16½ percent is at the start. It becomes 50 percent at the division of profits. But only fifty percent.”
“Only?”
“Only. You wouldn’t be doing the trading. I would.”
“And the losses?”
“You have lost $6,000 as soon as you go into partnership with me. That’s the way you have to look at it in these speculations. I never want you to speculate with money you can’t afford to lose.”
“Ah! Now I like the whole thing better. I kept wondering whether you’d ever get around to that, Harry. I wanted to hear you say it.”
“It’s the first time I had a chance to. Well?”
“Six thousand dollars?”
“Six thousand dollars, and I’ll put up four.”
“I’ll send you a cheque tomorrow.”
“All right. And now I’ll tell you the name of the stock I’m watching at present. St. Paul Paper Company.”
“What’s that?”
“They make paper for magazines and newspapers. The stock was selling yesterday at 6½. Too high to buy. The minute it goes under 5, I will buy. The minute it touches 9, I sell. It has gone to 10½ in the past year, but that’s a little too much.”
“Do you own any of it now?”
“Oh, no. I’ve just been studying it for two years. I got interested in it because I happened to notice that three of the Philadelphia newspapers buy their newsprint there. Haynes & Webster have a financial interest in one of the papers and may take over another. Until then I’d never paid any attention to the St. Paul company, but they’re almost a monopoly. Oh, the stock will go much higher some day, but you and I will be trading in something else.”
“Yes. Now, what Gibbsville men were going to encroach on our territory?”
“That man sitting over in the corner.”
“Peter W. Hofman?”
“Yes. He had some very unpleasant things to say about your father, Locky. Not so much about you as about your father, although you didn’t get off scot-free. He’s going to help some of your townsmen start a bank.”
“We’ll see,” said Abraham Lockwood. “He’s king here, but not in our little empire. But thanks for telling me, partner.”
FOUR
IT was only fifteen miles from Richterville to Gibbsville, the county seat; it was thirty-five miles from Richterville to Fort Penn, the capital of the Commonwealth; but it was easier to get from Richterville to Fort Penn than from Richterville to Gibbsville. Richterville thereby came within the Fort Penn sphere of influence rather than the Gibbsville.
To go from Richterville to Gibbsville the traveler was well advised to proceed on horseback. There were four steep hills and one mountain intervening and the road that had been scratched out of the mountainside was two frozen ruts in the winter and liable to be a morass at other seasons of the year. No light rig or cutter, only wagons and wide-runner sleds, could be expected to get through without having a wheel or cutter-runner snapped off in the ruts. The mountain road was so narrow that for most of its length one vehicle could not pass another. As a precaution the driver of a wagon, about to enter the road, would blow his horn—literally a horn, cut from a cow and hollowed out—and wait for an answer. If there was no answer he could fairly assume that no other wagon was coming from the opposite direction. If there was an answer he would wait until the oncoming wagon had come along and made the road clear. If the wind was wrong—howling, blowing in the wrong direction—and the warning horns unheard, the two wagons might meet, creating their own impasse. There would be a consultation of the two wagoners; a coin would be tossed. The winner of the toss would then help the loser to unhitch his team, unload the wagon, remove the wheels, and lift the empty wagon-box to a place behind the winner’s wagon. The loser’s wheels would be replaced, his team hitched up, the wagon reloaded, and the two parties, delayed an hour or two, would be on their separate opposite ways.
After Moses Lockwood established the Swedish Haven-Richterville stage there was an alternative method of getting from Richterville to the county seat: by stage to Swedish Haven, by rail from Swedish Haven to Gibbsville.
As against these inconvenient and hazardous routes, the steam railway line directly connected Richterville and Fort Penn. Richterville, solidly Pennsylvania Dutch, was the trading center for farmers and trappers to the east and south, coal miners to the north, farmers and iron miners to the southwest, horse and pony breeders to the west. In the town were a tannery, a foundry, a brick kiln, a wagon works, two grain mills, and the end-of-rail for the all-important Fort Penn, Richterville & Lantenengo Railway. There was not a Catholic, Episcopalian, or Presbyterian in the town, although there was a Baptist church for the sizable Negro community, many of whom were Pennsylvania Dutch-speaking. There was no high school prior to 1855.
The numerous Hoffners in Richterville were headed by Levi Hoffner, who had six daughters and was unhappy that he could not make a boy. Adelaide Hoffner, the second daughter, was the prettiest, but she was as determined as her father that she would not be married for her money. In due course three of her sisters were matched to suitable young men and in 1870 she had become the oldest unmarried Hoffner girl, still the prettiest, still determined to remain single until she could marry a man who would appreciate her good looks, of which she was fully conscious. It was beginning to look as if she might become the richest spinster in Richterville when Abraham Lockwood came into her life.
As a small boy he had been taken for rides in the family-owned stage. It was a two-hour journey, if all went well. At Richterville the stage would change horses for the return trip, and while this was being done Abraham’s father would take him to Mohn’s Hotel for dinner, transact whatever business was to be done in Richterville, and go back to Swedish Haven on the afternoon stage. Abraham Lockwood as a consequence had no acquaintances in Richterville except Ted, the Negro hostler at the stage stable, and Chris Mohn, owner of the hotel. At age fifteen the novelty of the trip had worn off for Abraham Lockwood, and he did not again go to Richterville until he was in his thirty-first year, in 1871.