Chapter 16
Pa Plays Poker—Eyeball to Eyeball
Word got around, all right—in a hurry!
Two days later we got a call from Franklin Royce that was anything but friendly. Pa must have sensed there was fire coming out of the banker’s eyes while he was still a long way off. The minute he saw the familiar black buggy, he said to Almeda, “I’ll handle this,” and walked a little way down the road away from the house.
“I’m here to talk to you and your wife, Hollister,” said Mr. Royce, hotly reining his horse up in front of Pa but remaining seated in his carriage. As he spoke he glanced over to where Almeda and I were standing near the door. His eyes threw daggers at us.
“What you got to say, Royce,” replied Pa, “you can say to me. I’m not about to put up with any more of your abuse or threats to my wife or daughter. If you haven’t learned your lesson from what happened in your bank last week, then maybe I’ll have to knock some more sense into that head of yours.”
“You dare lay a hand on me, Hollister, and I’ll have you up on charges before the day’s out!”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” said Pa. “But if you dare to threaten anyone in my family again, I won’t stop with bloodying your nose. Now go on . . . say your piece.”
“I’d like to know what the two of you think you’re trying to do, paying off Patrick Shaw’s note like that?”
“We made him a loan. I don’t see anything so unusual in that.”
“You’re mixing in my affairs, that’s what’s unusual about it!”
“Ain’t no law against loaning money to a friend.”
“You don’t have that kind of cash!”
Pa shrugged.
“I want to know where you got it!”
“There also ain’t no law that gives a banker the right to meddle in someone else’s private affairs,” Pa shot back. “Where Pat Shaw got the money to pay you off is no more your concern than where we might have gotten it to loan him—that is if we had anything to do with all this you’re talking about.”
“You know good and well you have everything to do with it, you dirty—”
“You watch your tongue!” shouted Pa, taking two steps toward Royce’s buggy. “There are ladies present. And if I hear one more filthy word from your mouth, I’ll slam it shut so hard you won’t speak any words for a week!”
Cowed but not humbled, Royce moderated his tone.
“Look, Hollister,” he said, “I know well enough that you are behind that money of Shaw’s. It’s all over town. You know it and I know it and everybody knows it! Now I’m here to ask you—the two of you—” he added, looking over at Almeda, “businessman to businessman, having nothing to do with the election, I’m asking you what are you trying to do by meddling in my affairs! Banking and making loans is my business, and you have no call to step into the middle of my dealings with my customers! I want to know what your intentions are.”
“I figure our intentions are our own business,” replied Pa coolly.
“Not when they interfere with my business!” Royce shot back. “And word around town is that you intend to continue sticking your nose into my negotiations with people who owe my bank money. So I ask you again, Hollister, what are your intentions?”
“Our intentions are to do what’s right,” answered Pa.
“Paying off other men’s loans, even when they are in legal default?”
“I ain’t admitted to doing any such thing.”
“Cut the hog swill, Hollister!”
“You want to know my intentions,” Pa said. “Then I’ll tell you straight—it’s my feeling that a man’s duty-bound to stand by his neighbors, whatever that means. And that’s what I intend to do. I’ll tell you, Royce, I’m not really all that concerned about you or your banking business, because from where I stand it seems to me you’re looking out for nobody but yourself. Now you can do what you want to me. You can say what you want, you can spread what lies you want. You can sic some investigator on me to try to run me off my land. You can beat my wife in this election. And maybe in the end you will run me out of Miracle Springs and will some day own every stitch of land from here to Sacramento. But nothing you do will make me stop standing up for what’s right, and for trying to help my friends and neighbors so long as there’s anything I can do for them. Now—is that plain-spoken enough for you?”
“So you intend to continue backing up the loans of others around here even if they should be called due, as people are saying?” repeated Royce.
“I said I aim to do what’s right.”
“What are you trying to do, Hollister, open a bank of your own?”
Pa shrugged. “I got nothing more to say to you.”
“You can’t do it, Hollister. You’ll never pull it off. You can’t possibly have enough cash to stand up to me.”
Almeda began walking toward the two men.
“Franklin,” she said approaching them, “do you remember just after I entered the mayor’s race, you said to me, ‘Two can play this game?’ You were, of course, insinuating that you could be just as underhanded toward me as you thought I was being to you by the publication of my flyer. I think anyone with much sense would say that this last month demonstrates that you have few equals when it comes to underhanded tactics.”
“How dare you suggest—” the banker began, but Almeda cut him off immediately.
“Let me finish, Franklin!” she said. “You have spread rumors about me throughout the community. You threatened my daughter and my husband in different ways. And now you are opening a store just down from mine intended, I presume, to drive me out of business. All we have done is help a friend. That hardly compares with your ruthless and self-serving behavior. And if it takes our going into the lending business to keep you from hurting any more of the families in this town, then so be it. Your own words condemn you, Franklin. Two can play this game! And if you feel compelled to enter the supplies and freight business, perhaps we will feel compelled to open a second bank in Miracle Springs, so that people can have a choice in where they go for financial help.”
“That is utterly ridiculous!” laughed Royce with disdain. “The two of you—a miner and his shopkeeper of a wife—financing a bank! I’ve never heard of anything so absurd! It takes thousands, more capital than you’ll ever have in your lives! The very notion makes me laugh!”
“You are very cocky, Franklin,” she said. “It may well prove your undoing.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Royce loudly.
“It isn’t only capital a business needs. Besides money, it takes integrity and a reputation that people can trust. I would say that you may be in short supply of those latter assets, Franklin, however large may be the fortune behind your enterprises.”
“A bank takes money, and nothing else. I don’t believe a word of all this! You may have stashed away a nest egg to help that no-good Shaw, but you won’t be so lucky next time.”
“We were hoping there wouldn’t have to be a next time, that you would see it will do you no good to call the notes you hold due.”
“Don’t be naive, Almeda. I’m a banker, and money is my business. And it’s not yours! So stay out of it!”
“If you call Rolf Douglas’s note, or anyone else’s, Royce, you’re going to find yourself straight up against us again,” said Pa, speaking once more. His voice rang with authority.
“I don’t believe you, Hollister. I’ve checked your finances, and I know your bank account. You don’t have that kind of money.”
“Then go ahead and do your worst, Royce,” said Pa.
“You’re bluffing, Hollister. I can call any of a dozen notes due, and there’s no possible way you can back them up.”
Pa stared straight into Mr. Royce’s face, and for a moment they stood eye to eye, as if each were daring the other to call the bluff. When Pa spoke, his words were cold and hard as steel.
“Try me, Royce,” he said, still staring into the banker’s eyes. “You just try me, if you want to take the chance. But you may find I’m not as easy an adversary as you think. People in these parts know I’m a man of my word, and they can trust me. I don’t think you’d be wise to go up against me.”
“What my husband is trying to tell you, Franklin,” said Almeda, “is that you can call notes due and try to foreclose all you want. We’ve let it be known that if people find themselves in trouble with you, they can come see us. You may call those dozen loans due, but once they are paid off, what are you left with? A vault full of cash. Without loans, a bank cannot make a profit. You’ll wind up with no loans, no land, no property, and before long the Royce Miners’ Bank will be out of business, Franklin.”
“That’s too ridiculous to deserve a reply!”
“Do you think the people of this town will think it ridiculous when they learn that the six-and-a-quarter percent interest you have been charging them is almost two full percentage points higher than the current rate in San Francisco and Sacramento?”
“Rates are higher further away from financial centers.”
“Your rates are two points higher than what we intend to charge people on our loans.”
“You would dare undercut me?”
“No, we merely intend to charge our borrowers the fair and current rate.”
“I don’t believe you!”
“If you don’t have better manners toward women yet, Royce,” interrupted Pa angrily, “than to call them liars to their face, I suggest you go see Pat Shaw and take a look at the note we drew up for him. Four-and-a-half percent, just like my wife said! You can squawk all you want about it, but when folks find out you’ve been taking advantage of them, they won’t take too kindly to it. They’re gonna be lining up at your door begging you to call their notes due so they can borrow from us instead!”
He paused just long enough to take a breath. Then his eyes bore into Franklin Royce one final time.
“So like I said, Royce,” he added, “you go ahead and do your worst. You think I’m bluffing, then you try me! You’d be doing this community a favor by calling every loan you hold due, and letting the good folks of Miracle Springs pay you off and start borrowing from somebody else at a fair rate. Then you can see what it’s like trying to make a living competing with my wife in the freight and supplies business!”
Mr. Royce returned Pa’s stare as long as he dared, which wasn’t long, then without another word, flicked his whip, turned his horse around, and flew off down the road back toward town.
Pa and Almeda watched him go. Then she slipped her hand through his arm, and they turned and walked slowly back to the house. They seemed at peace with what they had done, because they knew it was right, but they couldn’t help being anxious about the results. If Royce did start calling notes due, there wasn’t much they could do to stop him beyond helping a handful of other men, and that would only make it worse for everybody else. If they did bail out Rolf Douglas and whoever followed him, once they reached the $50,000 limit that Mr. Finch had promised, they would have no more help to give. And then, once word got out that the Hollister-Parrish “bank” had run dry, Mr. Royce would get his chance to foreclose on everybody in sight, run Parrish Mine and Freight out of business, gobble up all the land for miles around, get elected mayor, and gain control of the whole area.
Everything Pa and Almeda had said was true, and they meant every bit of it. But there was a lot of bluff in their words too. Now there was nothing left to do but wait and see how Mr. Royce decided to play his cards.
“Well, Corrie,” said Pa with a half-smile as they came toward me, “I reckon we’ve done it now. Your next article may be about the end of Miracle Springs and the beginning of Royceville!”
Almeda and I laughed. But all three of us knew Pa’s joke was a real possibility, too real to be very funny.