n on the plains. April rains came, and the
great fields glowed green under the mild spring sun. And Bob
Hendricks, collecting the money from his stock subscriptions, poured
it into the treasury of the company, and John Barclay spent the money
for seed and land and men to work the land, and so confident was he of
the success of the plan that he borrowed every dollar he could lay his
hands on, and got leases on more land and bought more seed and hired
more men, in the belief that during the summer Hendricks could sell
stock enough to pay back the loans. To Colonel Culpepper, Barclay gave
a block of five thousand dollars' worth of the stock as a bonus in
addition to his commission for his work in securing options, and the
colonel, feeling himself something of a capitalist, and being in funds
from the spring sale of lots in College Heights addition, invested in
new clothes, bought some farm products in Missouri, and went up and
down the earth proclaiming the glories of the Sycamore Valley, and in
May brought two car-loads of land seekers by stages and wagons and
buggies to Sycamore Ridge, and located them in Garrison County. And in
his mail when he came home he found a notice indicating that he had
overdrawn his account in the bank five hundred dollars, and that his
note was due for five hundred more on the second mortgage which he had
given the previous fall.

For two days he was plunged in gloom, and Barclay, observing his
depression and worming out of the colonel the cause, persuaded General
Hendricks to put the overdraft and the second mortgage note into one
note for a thousand dollars plus the interest for sixty days until the
colonel could make a turn, and after that the colonel was happy again.
He forgot for a moment the responsibility of wealth and engaged
himself in the task of making the Memorial Day celebration in Sycamore
Ridge the greatest event in the history of the town. Though there were
only five soldiers' graves to decorate, the longest procession
Garrison County had ever known wound up the hill to the cemetery, and
Colonel Martin Culpepper in his red sash, with his Knights Templar hat
on, riding up and down the line on an iron-gray stallion, was easily
the most notable figure in the spectacle. Even General Hendricks,
revived by the pomp of the occasion, heading the troop of ten veterans
of the Mexican War, and General Ward, in his regimentals, were
inconsequential compared with the colonel. And his oratio