Chapter 3

Chapter 3 begins the next segment of the book sixteen months after Buck's arrival in boomtown Aven.  Aven hadn't progressed to the point of actually having a bank so negotiations for Buck's first business loan would occur on the front porch of Amos Longshore's big house. While working up the courage to ask the richest man in town for a loan, Buck reflected upon his new life as he stood on the street in front of the Longshore's house. Aven had grown from a row of wooden shacks across from a railroad depot. Fresh water from a spring a half mile away from the depot had led to the construction of a whiskey distillery and with it a new commercial district to compete with the one by the depot where Buck worked. The hick from the sticks who'd never even seen a train a few months before now recognized each engineer's whistle and pawning those railroad men's pocket watches was the new crop country boy Buck was tending now. Harvest time was every railroad man's payday and Buck knew he was on the path to riches because he's "willin' to live like a hog in the back of Green's store, and stayin' lonesome because you can't make money by lendin' to friends."

Buck's short loan business was only part of his commercial education in Aven. Months of serving Aven's public at the counter of Green's store had honed Buck's powers of persuasion and convinced him that he'd found a way to make money so he could get ahead in the world but "getting ahead" for Buck meant more than just becoming a well-to-do counter clerk. Buck wanted to be lead wolf in the pack that ran the town. Buck's exaggerated individualism in Aven's developing urban environment was forged on a cotton farm where each day had seen the Bannon family struggle for existence.

  Longshore's daughter answers Buck's knock at the door and this results in Buck discovering he wants a little more from Longshore than just his money. As he watches the pretty girl walk down the hall to go get her father, Buck craves what he sees, "like finding rock candy in the syrup bucket." (to be continued...)