The Friendly Call
by
[Published in “Monthly Magazine Section,” July, 1910.]
When I used to sell hardware in the West, I often “made” a little town called Saltillo, in Colorado. I was always certain of securing a small or a large order from Simon Bell, who kept a general store there. Bell was one of those six-foot, low-voiced products, formed from a union of the West and the South. I liked him. To look at him you would think he should be robbing stage coaches or juggling gold mines with both hands; but he would sell you a paper of tacks or a spool of thread, with ten times more patience and courtesy than any saleslady in a city department store.
I had a twofold object in my last visit to Saltillo. One was to sell a bill of goods; the other to advise Bell of a chance that I knew of by which I was certain he could make a small fortune.
In Mountain City, a town on the Union Pacific, five times larger than Saltillo, a mercantile firm was about to go to the wall. It had a lively and growing custom, but was on the edge of dissolution and ruin. Mismanagement and the gambling habits of one of the partners explained it. The condition of the firm was not yet public property. I had my knowledge of it from a private source. I knew that, if the ready cash were offered, the stock and good will could be bought for about one fourth their value.
On arriving in Saltillo I went to Bell’s store. He nodded to me, smiled his broad, lingering smile, went on leisurely selling some candy to a little girl, then came around the counter and shook hands.
“Well,” he said (his invariably preliminary jocosity fit every call I made), “I suppose you are out here making kodak pictures of the mountains. It’s the wrong time of the year to buy any hardware, of course.”
I told Bell about the bargain in Mountain City. If he wanted to take advantage of it, I would rather have missed a sale than have him overstocked in Saltillo.
“It sounds good,” he said, with enthusiasm. “I’d like to branch out and do a bigger business, and I’m obliged to you for mentioning it. But–well, you come and stay at my house to-night and I’ll think about it.”
It was then after sundown and time for the larger stores in Saltillo to close. The clerks in Bell’s put away their books, whirled the combination of the safe, put on their coats and hats and left for their homes. Bell padlocked the big, double wooden front doors, and we stood, for a moment, breathing the keen, fresh mountain air coming across the foothills.
A big man walked down the street and stopped in front of the high porch of the store. His long, black moustache, black eyebrows, and curly black hair contrasted queerly with his light, pink complexion, which belonged, by rights, to a blonde. He was about forty, and wore a white vest, a white hat, a watch chain made of five-dollar gold pieces linked together, and a rather well-fitting two-piece gray suit of the cut that college boys of eighteen are wont to affect. He glanced at me distrustfully, and then at Bell with coldness and, I thought, something of enmity in his expression.
“Well,” asked Bell, as if he were addressing a stranger, “did you fix up that matter?”
“Did I!” the man answered, in a resentful tone. “What do you suppose I’ve been here two weeks for? The business is to be settled to-night. Does that suit you, or have you got something to kick about?”
“It’s all right,” said Bell. “I knew you’d do it.”
“Of course, you did,” said the magnificent stranger. “Haven’t I done it before?”
“You have,” admitted Bell. “And so have I. How do you find it at the hotel?”