For a long time the two rode in silence. Tom, who had also sold his stock, wondered if Steve knew. He decided he did. “However, he's decided to deal with me. He needs some one and has chosen me,” he thought. He made up his mind to be bold. After all, Steve was young. Only a year or two before he was nothing but a young upstart and the very boys in the street laughed at him. Tom grew a little indignant, but was careful to take thought before he spoke. “Perhaps, although he's young and don't look like much, he's a faster and shrewder thinker than any of us,” he told himself.
“You do talk like a fellow who has something up his sleeve,” he said laughing. “If you want to know, I sold my stock the same as the others. I wasn't going to take a chance of being a loser if I could help it. It may be the small-town way, but you know things maybe I don't know. You can't blame me for living up to my lights. I always did believe in the survival of the fittest and I got a daughter to support and put through college. I want to make a lady of her. You ain't got any kids yet and you're younger. Maybe you want to take chances I don't want to take. How do I know what you're up to?”
Again the two rode in silence. Steve had prepared himself for the talk. He knew there was a chance that, in its turn, the corn-cutting machine Hugh had invented might not prove practical and that in the end he might be left with a factory on his hands and with nothing to manufacture in it. He did not, however, hesitate. Again, as on the day in the bank when he was confronted by the two older men, he made a bluff. “Well, you can come in or stay out, just as you wish,” he said a little sharply. “I'm going to get hold of that factory, if I can, and I'm going to manufacture corn-cutting machines. Already I have promises of orders enough to keep running for a year. I can't take you in with me and have it said around town you were one of the fellows who sold out the small investors. I've got a hundred thousand dollars of stock in the company. You can have half of it. I'll take your note for the fifty thousand. You won't ever have to pay it. The earnings of the new factory will clean you up. You got to come clean, though. Of course you can go get John Clark and come out and make an open fight to get the factory yourselves, if you want to. I own the rights to the corn-cutting machine and will take it somewhere else and manufacture it. I don't mind telling you that, if we split up, I will pretty well advertise what you three fellows did to the small investors after I asked you not to do it. You can all stay here and own your empty factory and get what satisfaction you can out of the love and respect you'll get from the people. You can do what you please. I don't care. My hands are clean. I ain't done anything I'm ashamed of, and if you want to come in with me, you and I together will pull off something in this town we don't neither one of us have to be ashamed of.”