IXUNCLE JAP'S LILY
IX
UNCLE JAP'S LILY
Jaspar Panel owned a section of rough, hilly land to the north-east of Paradise. Everybody called him Uncle Jap. He was very tall, very thin, with a face burnt a brick red by exposure to sun and wind, and, born in Massachusetts, he had marched as a youth with Sherman to the sea. After the war he married, crossed the plains in a "prairie schooner," and, eventually, took up six hundred and forty acres of Government land in San Lorenzo County. With incredible labour, inspired and sustained by his natural acuteness, he wrought a miracle upon a singularly arid and sterile soil. I have been told that he was the first of the foothill settlers to irrigate abundantly, the first to plant out an orchard and vineyard, the first, certainly, to create a garden out of a sage-brush desert. Teamsters hauling wheat from the Carisa plains used to stop to shake the white alkaline dust from their overalls under Uncle Jap's fig trees. They and the cowboys were always made welcome. To such guests Uncle Jap would offer figs, water-melons, peaches, a square meal at noon, and exact nothing in return except appreciation. If a man failed to praise Uncle Jap's fruit or his wife's sweet pickles, he was not pressed to "call again." The old fellow was inordinately proud of his colts, his Poland-China pigs, his "graded" bull, his fountain in the garden.
"Nice place you have, Mr. Panel," a stranger might say.
"Yas; we call it Sunny Bushes. Uster be nothin' but sun an' bushes onst. It's nice, yas, and it's paid for."
"What a good-looking mare!"
"Yas; she's paid for, too."
Everything on the ranch, animal, vegetable, and mineral, was "paid for." Uncle Jap was the last man to hurt anybody's feelings, but the "paid for" rankled on occasion, for some of his visitors stood perilously near the edge of bankruptcy, and, as a rule, had not paid for either the land they occupied, or the cattle they branded, or the clothes they wore. To understand this story you must grasp the fact that Uncle Jap lived with credit and not on it.
His wife, also of New England parentage, had a righteous horror of debt bred in her bone. Uncle Jap adored her. If he set an extravagant value upon his other possessions, what price above rubies did he place upon the meek, silent, angular woman, who had been his partner, companion, and friend for more than a quarter of a century. Sun and wind had burnt her face, also, to the exact tint of her husband's. Her name was Lily.
"And, doggone it, she looks like a lily," Uncle Jap would say, in moments of expansion. "Tall an' slim, yas, an' with a little droop of her head. I'd ought ter be grateful to God fer givin' me sech a flower outer heaven--an' I am, I am. Look at her now! What a mover!"
Uncle Jap's Lily chasing a hen certainly exhibited an activity surprising in one of her years. By a hairbreadth she missed perfection. Uncle Jap had been known to hint, nothing more, that he would have liked a dozen or so of babies. The hint took concrete form in: "I think a heap o' young things, colts, kittens, puppies--an' the like." Then he would sigh.
We came to California in the eighties, and in '93, if my memory serves me, Uncle Jap discovered bituminous rock in a corner of his ranch. He became very excited over this find, and used to carry samples of ore in his pocket which he showed to the neighbours.
"There's petroleum whar that ore is--sure. An' ef I could strike it, boys, why, why I'd jest hang my Lily with di'monds from her head to her feet, I would."
This, mind you, was before the discovery of the now famous oil fields. Even in those early days experts were of opinion that oil might be found below the croppings of bituminous rock by any pioneer enterprising enough to bore for it.
About this time we began to notice that Uncle Jap was losing interest in his ranch. Cattle strayed through the fence because he neglected to mend it, calves escaping were caught and branded by unscrupulous neighbours, a colt was found dead, cast in a deep gulch.
"What's the matter with Uncle Jap?" we asked, at the May-Day picnic.
Mrs. Fullalove, a friend of Mrs. Panel, answered the question.
"I'll tell ye," she said sharply. "Jaspar Panel has gotten a disease common enough in Californy. He's sufferin' from a dose o' swelled head."
Mrs. Panel sprang to her feet. Her face was scarlet; her pale eyes snapped; the nostrils of her thin nose were dilated.
"Susan Jane Fullalove," she cried shrilly, "how dare you?"
Mrs. Fullalove remained calm.
"It's so, Lily. Yer so thin, I didn't see ye sittin' edgeways, but ye needn't to ramp an' roar. Yer ranchisflyin' to flinders because Mr. Panel's tuk a notion that it's a-floatin' on a lake of ile."
"An' mebbe it is," replied Mrs. Panel, subsiding.
Shortly afterwards we heard that Uncle Jap was frequenting saloons, hanging about the hotels in the county town, hunting, of course, for a capitalist who would bore for oil on shares, seeking the "angel" with the dollars who would transport him and his Lily into the empyrean of millionaires. When he confided as much to us, my brother Ajax remarked--
"Hang it all, Uncle Jap, you've got all you want."
"That's so. I hev. But Lily----Boys, I don't like ter give her away-- this is between me an' you--she's the finest in the land, ain't she? Yas. An' work? Great Minneapolis! Why, work come mighty near robbin' her of her looks. It did, fer a fact. An' now, she'd ought ter take things easy, an' hev a good time."
"She does have a good time."
"Ajax, yer talkin' through yer hat. What do you know of wimmenfolk? Not a derned thing. They're great at pretendin'. I dessay you, bein' a bachelor, think that my Lily kind o' wallers in washin' my ole duds, an' cookin' the beans and bacon when the thermometer's up to a hundred in the shade, and doin' chores around the hog pens an' chicken yards? Wal--she don't. She pretends, fer my sake, but bein' a lady born an' bred, her mind's naterally set on--silks an' satins, gems, a pianner-- an' statooary."
"I can't believe it," said my brother. "Mrs. Panel has always seemed to me the most sensible woman----"
"Lady,ifyou please."
"I beg pardon--the most sensible lady of my acquaintance, and the most contented with the little home you've made for her."
"She helped make it. O' course, it's nateral, you bein' so young an' innercent, that you should think you know more about Mis' Panel's inside than I do, but take it from me that she's pined in secret for what I'm a-goin' ter give her before I turn up my toes."
With that he rode away on his old pinto horse, smiling softly and nodding his grizzled head.
Later, he travelled to San Francisco, where he interviewed presidents of banks and other magnates. All and sundry were civil to Uncle Jap, but they refused to look for a needle in a haystack. Uncle Jap confessed, later, that he was beginning to get "cold feet," as he expressed it, when he happened to meet an out-of-elbows individual who claimed positively that he could discover water, gold, or oil, with no tools or instruments other than a hazel twig. Uncle Jap, who forgot to ask why this silver-tongued vagabond had failed to discover gold for himself, returned in triumph to his ranch, bringing with him the wizard, pledged to consecrate his gifts to the "locating" of the lake of oil. In return for his services Uncle Jap agreed to pay him fifty dollars a week, board and lodging included. When he told us of the bargain he had made, his face shone with satisfaction and confidence. He chuckled, as he added slyly--
"I peeked in to some o' them high-toned joolery stores on Montgomery and Kearney Streets. Yas, I did. An' I priced what they call a ti- airy, sort o' di'mond crown. They run up into the thousands o' dollars. Think o' Mis' Panel in ati-airy, boys; but shush-h-h- h! Not a word to her--eh?"
We pledged ourselves to secrecy, but when Uncle Jap's back was turned, Ajax cursed the wizard as the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims cursed the jackdaw. When we saw Mrs. Panel, she seemed to be thinner and more angular, but her lips were firmly compressed, as if she feared that something better left unsaid might leak from them. An old sunbonnet flapped about her red, wrinkled face, her hands, red and wrinkled also, trembled when we inquired after the wizard and his works.
"He's located the lake," she replied. Suppressed wrath boiled over, as she added fiercely: "I wish 'twas a lake o' fire an' brimstone, an' him a-bilin' in the middle of it." Then, reading the sympathy in our eyes, she continued quickly: "I ain't denyin' that Jaspar has a right to do what he pleases with what lies out o' doors. He never interfered with me in my kitchen, never! Would you gen'lemen fancy a glass o' lemonade? No? Wal--I'm glad you called in, fer I hev been feelin' kind o' lonesome lately."
What Uncle Jap's Lily suffered when he mortgaged all his cattle to sink a well nobody knows but herself, and she never told. The wizard indicated a certain spot below the croppings of bituminous rock; a big derrick was built; iron casing was hauled over the Coast Range; the well was bored.
Then, after boring some two thousand feet, operations had to be suspended, because Uncle Jap's dollars were exhausted, and his patience. The wizard swore stoutly that the lake was there, millions and millions of barrels of oil, but he deemed it expedient to leave the country in a hurry, because Uncle Jap intimated to him in the most convincing manner that there was not room in it for so colossal a fraud. The wizard might have argued the question, but the sight of Uncle Jap's old Navy six-shooter seemed to paralyse his tongue.
After this incident Uncle Jap ranched with feverish energy, and Mrs. Fullalove said that the old man had gotten over a real bad dose of swelled head.
* * * * *
* * * * *
Five years later came the oil boom!
Everybody knows now that it flowed in prodigious quantities into the vats of one man, whom we shall speak of with the respect which the billionaire inspires, as the Autocrat of Petroleum. Let us hasten to add that we shall approach him in the person of his agent, who, so far as Uncle Jap was concerned, doubtless acted in defiance of the will of the greatest church builder and philanthropist in the world.
Oil was struck in pints, quarts, gallons, buckets, and finally in thousands and tens of thousands of barrels! It flowed copiously in our cow-county; it greased, so to speak, the wheels--and how ramshackle some of them were!--of a score of enterprises, it saturated all things and persons.
Now, conceive, if you can, the triumphant I-told-you-so-boys expression of Uncle Jap. He swelled again visibly: head first, then body and soul. The county kowtowed to him. Speculators tried to buy his ranch, entreated him to name a price.
"I'll take half a million dollars, in cold cash," said Uncle Jap.
The speculators offered him instead champagne and fat cigars. Uncle Jap refused both. He was not going to be "flimflammed," no, sir! Not twice in his life,no, Siree Bob! He, by the Jumping Frog of Calaveras, proposed to paddle his own canoe into and over the lake of oil. If the boys wished him to forgo the delights of that voyage, let 'em pungle up half a million--or get.
They got.
Presently, after due consultation with a famous mining engineer, Uncle Jap mortgaged his cattle for the second time, and sank another well. He discovered oil sand, not a lake. Then he mortgaged his land, every stick and stone on it, and sunk three more wells. It was a case of Bernard Palissy. Was Bernard a married man? I forget. If so, did he consult his wife before he burnt the one and only bed? Did she protest? It is a fact that Uncle Jap's Lily did not protest. She looked on, the picture of misery, and her mouth was a thin line of silence across her wrinkled impassive countenance.
When every available cent had been raised and sunk, the oil spouted out. Who looked at the fountain in the patch of lawn by the old fig trees? Possibly Mrs. Panel. Not Uncle Jap. He, the most temperate of men, became furiously drunk on petroleum. He exuded it from every pore. Of course he was acclaimed by the county and the State (the Sunday editions published his portrait) as the star-spangled epitome of Yankee grit and get-there.
At this point we must present, with apologies, the agent of the Autocrat,theagent, the High-muck-a-muck of the Pacific Slope, with a salary of a hundred thousand a year andperks! In his youth Nat Levi smelt of fried fish, unless the smell was overpowered by onions, and he changed his lodgings more often than he changed his linen. Now you meet him as Nathaniel Leveson, Esquire, who travelled in his private car, who assumed the God, when the God was elsewhere, who owned a palace on Nob Hill, and some of the worst, and therefore the most paying, rookeries in Chinatown, who never refused to give a cheque for charitable purposes when it was demanded in a becomingly public manner, who, like the Autocrat, had endowed Christian Churches, and had successfully eliminated out of his life everything which smacked of the Ghetto, except his nose.
Nathaniel Leveson visited our county, opened an office, and began to lay his pulpy white hands upon everything which directly or indirectly might produce petroleum. In due season he invited Uncle Jap to dine with him at the Paloma Hotel, in San Lorenzo. The old man, with the hayseed in his hair, and the stains of bitumen upon his gnarled hands, ate and drank of the best, seeing a glorified vision of his Lily crowned with diamonds at last. The vision faded somewhat when Nathaniel began to talk dollars and cents. Even to Uncle Jap, unversed in such high matters as finance, it seemed plain that Leveson & Company were to have the dollars, and that to him, the star-spangled epitome of Yankee grit and get-there were to be apportioned the cents.
"Lemme see," he said, with the slow, puzzled intonation of the man who does not understand; "I own this yere oil----"
"Subject to the mortgage, Mr. Panel, I believe?"
"That don't amount to shucks," said Uncle Jap.
"Quite so. Forgive me for interrupting you."
"I own this yere oil-field, lake I call it, and, bar the mortgage, it's bin paid for with the sweat of my--soul."
He brought out the word with such startling emphasis, that Nathaniel nearly upset the glass of fine old cognac which he was raising to his lips.
"Yas, my soul," continued Uncle Jap, meditatively. "I risked everything I'd got. Man," he leant across the gaily decorated table, with its crystal, its pink shades, its pretty flowers, and compelled his host to meet his flaming eyes,--"man, I risked my wife's love and respect. And," he drew a deep breath, "by God, I was justified. I got there. If I hadn't," the fire died down in his mild blue eyes, and the thin body seemed to wither and shrink,--"if I hadn't struck it, it would hev killed her, the finest lady in the land, an' me too. It was nip an' tuck with both of us. And now," his voice warmed into life again,--"and now you offer me fifty thousand dollars."
"I am anxious to treat you right, Mr. Panel. Another glass of brandy? No. Between ourselves the market is getting weaker every day. Fifty thousand profit, perhaps, may seem a small sum to you, but I cannot offer more. You are at perfect liberty to refuse my cheque; others, perhaps----"
Uncle Jap rose up grim and gaunt.
"I've ate dinner with you," he murmured, "so I'll say nothing more than 'thank you' and 'good-bye.'"
"Good-bye, Mr. Panel. At any time, if you have reason to change your mind, I shall be glad to talk business with you."
Uncle Jap returned to his own hotel to pass a restless night. Next day he sought a certain rich man who had a huge ranch in our county. The rich man, let us call him Dives, had eaten Uncle Jap's figs, and taken his advice, more than once, about cattle.
"Who's a-buyin' oil lakes?" demanded Uncle Jap.
"Nathaniel Leveson."
"Who else?"
Dives eyed Uncle Jap keenly. Rich men don't tell all they know, otherwise they would not be rich. Still, those figs and that water- melon on a broiling July afternoon had tasted uncommonly good!
"Look here, Mr. Panel, I think I can guess what has happened. Somebody has tried to squeeze you--eh?"
"That's so."
"Um! You're not the first."
"I wan't squeezed."
"Not yet, but----Mr. Panel, I should like to do you a service, and I know you to be an intelligent man. Do you see this sheet of blotting- paper?"
The blotting-paper lay immaculate upon the desk. Dives took a clean quill, dipped it into ink, and held it poised over the white pad. Uncle Jap watched him with interest.
"This," continued Dives, thoughtfully, "represents you and your ranch, Mr. Panel," he made a small dot upon the blotting-paper. "This," he made a much larger dot, "represents me and all I have. Now Leveson represents--this."
With a violent motion, quite contrary to his usual gentle, courteous manner, Dives plunged the quill to the bottom of the ink pot, withdrew it quickly, and jerked its contents upon the blotting-paper. A huge purple blot spread and spread till the other small blots were incorporated.
"D--n him!" spluttered Uncle Jap.
Dives shrugged his shoulders, and smiled.
"My advice is: take what Leveson offers."
"Fifty thousand for millions?"
"Possibly. Can you touch them, if Omnipotence forbids?"
Dives stared moodily at the big purple blot; then picking up the sheet of blotting-paper he tore it to pieces with his nervous, finely-formed fingers, and dropped it into the waste-paper basket. When he looked up, he saw that Uncle Jap's mild blue eyes were curiously congested.
"You might see So-and-so," Dives named a banker. "I'll write a note of introduction." Then he added with a faint inflection of derision: "I fear it will be of no service to you, because few business men care to buy trouble even at a bargain."
All this Ajax and I heard from Uncle Jap, after he returned from San Lorenzo without selling Sunny Bushes to So-and-so. None the less, he brought back a pair of small diamond ear-rings.
"Lily's ears ain't pierced," he explained; "but she'll hev a reel splendid time lookin' at 'em, jest as I uster hev with my nightie."
"Your--nightie?"
Uncle Jap chuckled and rubbed together his bony hands, cracking the joints.
"Yas, my nightie. Never tole you boys about that, did I? Wal, about a month before Lily an' me was fixin' up to get merried, she made me a nightie. It was mos' too dressy fer a lady to wear, let alone a critter like me who'd allus slep' in his pants an' day shirt. 'Twas of fine linen, pleated, and fixed with ribands, yaller riband, I chose the colour. Lily was kinder stuck on pale blue, but I liked yaller best. Lily knew what I' do with that nightie, an' I done it. I put it away in the tissoo paper 'twas wrapped in, an' I hev it still. I've got more solid satisfaction out of lookin' at it than I ever hev out o' my bank book. An," he concluded warmly, "Lily's goin' ter feel jest that- way about these yere sollytaires."
What followed immediately afterwards is county history. Uncle Jap decided to borrow money to develop his bonanza. The Autocrat, with tentacles stretching to the uttermost ends of the earth, may--I dare not affirm that he did--have issued instructions that such money as Jaspar Panel asked for was to be paid. Jaspar Panel asked for a good deal, and got it. He sunk more wells and capped them; he built reservoirs, he laid down pipe line. The day of triumph dawned when an English company offered to take all the oil Uncle Jap could supply, provided it were delivered free on board their vessels. Then came the crushing blow that the railroad would not transport Mr. Panel's petroleum. If they did--this was not the reason given by the shipping agents--the Autocrat might bedispleased.
Meantime the banks politely requested Jaspar Panel to meet his obligations.
Hitherto, Uncle Jap had been a man of simple and primitive beliefs. He had held, for instance, that a beneficent Providence will uphold Right against Might; he had pinned his faith to the flag under which he fought and bled when a boy; he had told his Lily (who believed him) that American citizenship is a greater thing than a Roman's in Rome's palmiest day: a phrase taken whole from the mouth of a Fourth of July orator. Last of all, he had believed devoutly in his own strong hands and will, the partnership of mind and muscle which confronts seemingly insuperable obstacles confident that it can destroy them.
And now, hour by hour, day by day, conviction settled upon his soul that in this world one only reigned supreme: the Autocrat of Oil, whose High Priest was Nathaniel Leveson. After heart-rending months of humiliation, upon the eve of foreclosure by the banks, Uncle Jap wrote a forlorn letter to Nathaniel, accepting his offer of fifty thousand dollars for the lake of oil. Mr. Leveson, so a subordinate replied,was not buying oil properties! For the moment he was interested in other matters ... Uncle Jap happened to read next day that Leveson, treading in the footsteps of his Master, was about to present a splendid church to the people of San Lorenzo. Uncle Jap stared at the paper till it turned white, till he saw in the middle of it a huge purple blot ever-increasing in size.
That evening he cleaned his old six-shooter, which had made the climate of the county so particularly pestilential for the wizard with the hazel twig.
"Pore critter," he muttered as he wiped the barrel, "he was down to his uppers, but this feller------" Mrs. Panel, putting away the supper things, heard her husband swearing softly to himself. She hesitated a moment; then she came in, and seeing the pistol, a gasp escaped her.
"What air you doin' with that, Jaspar Panel?"
Uncle Jap coughed.
"There's bin a skunk around," he said. "I've kind o' smelled him for weeks past, hain't you?"
"I never knowed you to shoot a skunk with anything but a shot-gun."
"That's so. I'd disremembered. Wonder if I kin shoot as straight as I used ter?"
For answer his wife, usually so undemonstrative, bent down, took the pistol from his hand, put it back into the drawer, and, slightly blushing, kissed the old man's cheek.
"Why, Lily, what ails ye?"
His surprise at this unwonted caress brought a faint smile to her thin lips.
"Nothing."
"Ye ain't tuk a notion that yer goin' to die?"
"Nothing ails me, Jaspar," her voice was strong and steady. "I'm strong as I was twenty year ago, or nearly so. I kin begin life over agen, ef I hev to."
"Who said you hed to?" enquired her husband fiercely. "Who said you hed to?" he repeated. "Susan Jane Fullalove? I'd like ter wring her dam neck. Oh, it wan't her, eh? Wal, you take if from me that you ain't agoin' to begin life agen onless it's in a marble hall sech as you've dreamed about ever since you was shortcoated. Let me hear no more sech talk. D'ye hear?"
"I hear," she answered meekly, and went back to her kitchen.
* * * * *
* * * * *
Next day she came to us across the cow-pasture as we were smoking our pipes after the mid-day meal. We guessed that no light matter had brought her afoot, with such distress upon her face.
"I'm in trouble," she said nervously.
"We are your friends," said Ajax gravely.
"Jaspar's gone to town," she gasped.
Uncle Jap, since the striking of the oil, had been in the habit of going to town so often that this statement aroused no surprise. We waited for more information.
"I'm scared plum ter death," Mrs. Panel continued. "I want ter foller him at onst. Jaspar's taken the team. I thought maybe you'd hitch up and drive me in this afternoon--now."
The last word left her lips with a violence that was positively imperative.
"Certainly," said Ajax. He turned to leave the room. We neither of us asked a question. Upon the threshold he addressed me:
"I'll bring the buggy round while you change."
I reflected that it was considerate of Ajax to allow me to drive Mrs. Panel the twenty-six miles between our ranch and San Lorenzo. I nodded and went into my bedroom.
* * * * *
* * * * *
For the first ten miles, Mrs. Panel never opened her lips. I glanced occasionally at her impassive face, wondering when she would speak. Somehow I knew that she would speak, and she did. It was like her to compress all she had left unsaid into the first sentence.
"Jaspar's gone plum crazy with trouble! he took his six-shooter with him."
After that, details given with a descriptive realism impossible to reproduce. The poor creature revealed herself to me during the next few minutes as I feel sure she had never revealed herself to her husband.
"He's mad, plum crazy," she pleaded. "Nobody knows what he's suffered but me. I don't say it ain't a jedgment, mebbe it is. We thought we was jest about right. The pride we took in Sunny Bushes was sinful; yas, it was. The Lord has seen fit to chastise us, an' I'm willin', I tole Jaspar so, ter begin agen. We're healthy, an strong, though we don't look it, I'll allow. Jaspar is plum crazy. His words las' night proved it. He said we might begin life agen in a marble hall sech as I hed dreamed about. Good land o' Peter! I never dreamed of marble halls in all my life, but I dassn't contradict him."
"He believes you dreamed of them," I said, "and he is quite sure you ought to live in them."
"He thinks the world o' me," said Mrs. Panel, in a softer tone, "but this world an' the next won't turn him from what he's set his mind to do. I'd oughter be ashamed o' speakin' so of him, but it's so. Mercy! I hev been talkin'."
She said no more till we descended from the buggy in the livery stable where Jaspar was in the habit of putting up his horses.
"You ain't seen Mr. Panel, hev you?" she asked the ostler.
"He's around somewheres," the man replied. With this information we started out to look for him. Away from the familiar brush hills, confronted by strange faces, confused, possibly, by the traffic, my companion seemed so nervous and helpless that I dared not leave her. Almost unconsciously, we directed our steps towards the Amalgamated Oil Company's office. Here we learned that Leveson was in town, and that Uncle Jap had called to see him.
"Did he see him?" Mrs. Panel's voice quavered.
"No," the clerk answered curtly; then he added: "Nobody sees the boss without an appointment. We told Mr. Panel to call to-morrow."
If the clerk had spoken with tongues of angels Lily could not have assumed a more seraphic expression.
"An' where is he now?" she asked.
"Your husband, ma'am? I can't tell you."
"I mean Mr. Leveson."
"He's in there," the private room was indicated, "and up to his eyes in work. He won't quit till he goes to dinner at the Paloma. D'ye hear the typewriters clicking? He makes things hum when he's here, and don't you forget it."
"I shall never forget that," said Mrs. Panel, in an accent which made me remember that her grandfather had been a graduate of Harvard University. "Good-afternoon."
We walked on down the street. Suddenly, Mrs. Panel staggered, and might have fallen had I not firmly grasped her arm.
"I dunno' what ails me," she muttered.
"Did you eat any breakfast this morning?"
"I dunno' as I did," she admitted with reluctance.
"Did you eat any dinner?"
"Mebbee I didn't." Her innate truthfulness compelled her to add with a pathetic defiance: "I couldn't hev swallered a mossel to save my life."
I took her to a restaurant, and prescribed a plate of soup and a glass of wine. Then I said with emphasis:
"Now, look here, Mrs. Panel! I want you to rest, while I hunt up Mr. Panel. When I find him I'll bring him to you."
"An' s'pose he won't come?"
"He will come."
"No, he won't; not till he's done what he's set his mind to do. Was you aimin' to hunt fer Jaspar up an' down this town?"
"Certainly. It's not as big as you think."
"'Pears to me it'd be a better plan to keep an eye on the other feller."
With a woman's instinct she had hit the mark.
"Perhaps it would," I admitted.
"I noticed one or two things," she continued earnestly. "Near the office is an empty lot with trees and bushes. I'd as lief rest there as here ef it's the same to you. Then you kin look around for Jaspar, if ye've a mind to."
"And if I find him?"
"Watch him, as I shall watch the other feller."
"And then----"
"The rest is in the dear Lord's hands."
She adjusted the thick veil which Southern Californian women wear to keep the thick dust from their faces, and together we returned to Leveson's office. Passing the door, I could hear the typewriters still clicking. Mrs. Panel sat down under a tree in the empty lot, and for the first time since we had met that day spoke in her natural tones.
"I come away without feeding the chickens," she said.
I looked at my watch; it was nearly six. One hour of daylight remained. Leveson, I happened to know, was in the habit of dining about half-past six. He often returned to the office after dinner. Between the Hotel Paloma, which lay just outside the town and the office ran a regular service of street cars. Leveson was the last man in the world to walk when he could drive. It seemed reasonably certain that Jaspar, failing to see Leveson at the office, would try to speak to him at the hotel. From my knowledge of the man's temperament and character, I was certain that he would not shoot down his enemy without warning. So I walked up to the hotel feeling easier in my mind. The clerk, whom I knew well, assigned me a room. I saw several men in the hall, but not Uncle Jap.
"Does Mr. Leveson dine about half-past six?" I asked.
The clerk raised his brows.
"That's queer," he said. "You're the second man to ask that question within an hour. Old man Panel asked the same thing."
"And what did you tell him?"
"Mr. Leveson don't dine till seven. He goes to the church first."
If the man had said that Leveson went to Heaven I could not have been more surprised. Then I remembered what I had read in the local papers. I had not seen the church yet. I had not wished to see it, knowing that every stone in it was paid for with the sweat--as Uncle Jap had put it--of other men's souls.
"Where is this church?"
"You don't know? Third turning to the left after passing the Olive Branch Saloon."
"Leveson owns that too, doesn't he?"
The clerk yawned. "I dare say. He owns most of the earth around here, and most of the people on it."
I walked quickly back towards the town, wondering what took Leveson to the church. No doubt he wanted to see if he were getting his money's worth, to note the day's work, perhaps to give the lie to the published statement that he built churches and never entered them. Nearly half-an-hour had passed since I left Mrs. Panel.
When I reached the third turning to the left I saw the church, certainly the handsomest in San Lorenzo. It stood in a large lot, littered with builders' materials. The workmen had left it at six. The building had an indescribably lifeless aspect. An hour before men had been busy within and without it, now not a soul was to be seen. I had time to walk round it, to note that the doors were locked, to note also, quite idly, that the window of the vestry was open. I could see no signs of Uncle Jap.
Coming round to the front, I saw in the distance a portly figure approaching, followed by a thin, dust-coloured wraith of a woman. I slipped behind a tree and waited. Leveson strolled up, bland and imposing. He stood still for a moment, staring intently at the outside of his church now completed. Then, taking a key from his pocket, he opened the vestry door and entered the building, closing the door behind him. I went to meet Mrs. Panel.
"Seen Jaspar?"
"I haven't."
"What's that feller," she always spoke of Leveson as a 'feller,' "doin' in a church?"
"It's his church. He built it."
"Good Land o' Peter! What's he doin' in it anyway?"
"Not praying, I think."
"Shush-h-h-h."
Mrs. Panel touched my arm, thrusting out her lean face in an attitude of intense attention. I strained my own ears, fairly good ones, but heard nothing.
"Jaspar's in there," said his wife. "I hear his voice."
She trembled with excitement. Obviously, Jaspar had concealed himself somewhere in the vestry. No time was to be lost.
Turning the north-east corner of the building, where the vestry is situated, I crawled under the window, followed by Mrs. Panel. The two men were within a few feet of us. Uncle Jap's slightly high-pitched tones fell sharply upon the silence.
"This is a leetle surprise party, ain't it?" he was saying.
Leveson answered thickly: "What are you doing here, sir?"
Although I risked discovery at an inopportune moment, I could not resist the temptation to raise my eyes level with the sill of the window. So did Uncle Jap's Lily. We both peered in. Uncle Jap was facing Leveson; in his hand he held the long-barrelled six-shooter; in his eyes were tiny pin-point flashes of light such as you see in an opal on a frosty morning. Terror had spread a grim mask upon the other; his complexion was the colour of oatmeal, his pendulous lips were quivering, his huge body seemed of a sudden to be deflated. He might have been an empty gas bag, not a man.
"I'm goin' to tell ye that," continued Uncle Jap mildly, "I come here to hev a leetle talk with you. Sinse I've bin in San Lorenzy County two men hev tried to ruin me: one left the county in a hurry; you're the other."
"I give you my word of honour, Mr. Panel----"
"That's about allyouwould give, an' it ain't wuth takin'."
"Do you mean to kill me?"
"Ef I hev to, 't won't keep me awake nights."
In my ear I heard his Lily's attenuated whisper: "Nor me neither, if Jaspar ain't caught."
And I had thought that solicitude for Jaspar's soul had sent his Lily, hot-foot to prevent the crime of--murder! I learnt something about women then which I shall not forget.
"You propose to blackmail me, I suppose?"
"Ugly word, that, but it's yours, not mine. I prefer to put it this way. I propose to consecrate this yere church with an act o' justice."
"Go on!"
"This county wan't big enough for the other feller an' me, so he had to go; it ain't big enough to-day for you an' me, but this time, I'm a-goin', whether you stay in it orunderit."
At the word "under" Uncle Jap's Lily nudged me. I looked at her. Her face was radiant. Her delight in her husband at such a moment, her conviction that he was master of the situation, that he had regained by this audacious move all the prestige which he had in her estimation, lost--these things rejuvenated her.
"It's a question of dollars, of course?"
"That's it. Before you ask for credit with the angel Gabriel, you've got to squar' up with Jaspar Panel."
"With the dear Lord's help, Jaspar has found a way," whispered the joyful voice in my ear.
"How much?" demanded Leveson. His colour was coming back.
"We've got to figger on that. Take a pencil an' paper an' sit down."
"This is ridiculous."
"Sit down, you----"
Nathaniel Leveson sat down. The vestry had been used by the contractor as an office; the plain deal table was littered with scraps of paper. Leveson took out a gold pencil-case.
"Married man, ain't ye?" said Uncle Jap, with seeming irrelevance.
"Yes."
"Ever give your wife a ti-airy: diamond crown, sorter?"
"What the----"
"Answer--quick!"
"Yes."
"What did ye pay for it?Quick!"
"Ten thousand dollars."
"Put that down first."
The joy and gladness had entirely melted out of Mrs. Panel's thin voice as she whispered dole-fully to me: "Jaspariscrazy, after all."
"No, he isn't," I whispered back.
Jaspar continued in a mild voice: "What does a way-up outfit o' lady's clothes cost: sealskin sacques, satins, the best of everything outside and in?"
"I don't know."
"You've got to figger it out--quick!"
"Say ten thousand, more or less."
"Put down fifteen; I'd jest as lief it was more 'n less. Put down a hundred dollars fer me, I mean to hev a good suit o' clothes myself. What does that come to?"
"Twenty-five thousand, one hundred dollars. Aren't you wasting time, Mr. Panel?"
"Nit. Of course if we happened to be interrupted it might be awkward fer you. If somebody should call, you'll say, of course, that yer very particularly engaged, eh?"
"Yes," said Nathaniel Leveson. "To oblige me, Mr. Panel, take your finger from that trigger."
"Ah? I'd ought ter hev done that before. I'd disremembered 'twas a hair trigger. Now then, put down Sunny Bushes, includin' the oil lake, at yer own figger, fifty thousand. Got it? Yas. Now then, for wear an' tear of two precious souls an' bodies--that's it! Fifty thousand more. Got it? Yas. How much now?"
"One hundred and twenty-five thousand, one hundred dollars."
"Right! What does a marble hall cost?"
"A marble----"
"You heard what I said plain enough. You live in one yerself. What did that leetle shebang on Nob Hill cost ye?"
"Four hundred thousand dollars."
"Jiminy Christmas! Marble halls come high, but you've a large fam'ly, more's the pity. Put down seventy-five thousand. Got it? Yas. Now then, about statooary--"
"Good God!"
"Don't call on the Lord so loud. I reckon he's nearer than you give Him credit fer. Statooary comes high, too, but one don't want overly much of it. A leetle gives a tone to a parlour. Put down five thousand. Got it! Yas. Furniture an' fixins, lemmee see! Wal, when it comes to buyin' fixin's, Mis' Panel beats the world. Put down ten thousand more. Total, please!"
"Two hundred and fifteen thousand and one hundred dollars."
"Make out yer personal note to me an' Mis' Panel fer that amount. One day after date. An' consideration. Sunny Bushes, oil, mortgage an' all, butnotthe stock, I wouldn't sell any living critter to sech as you. There's pen an' ink all handy."
We heard the scratching of pen on paper.
"Ye look mighty pleased," said Uncle Jap, "an' it's not because yer gittin' a property wuth a million for a quarter its value, nor because late in the day ye've squared an ugly account, but because yer thinkin' that this yere note ain't wuth the paper it's written on. An' it ain't-yit."
Again Mrs. Panel nudged me. Her beatific expression told me more eloquently than words that her Jasper was the greatest man on earth.
"Notes-of-hand given by onreliable parties must be secured," said Uncle Jap slowly. "This yere is goin' to be secured by a confession, dictated by me, written out an' signed by you. When the note is paid, I hand over the confession--see! If the note ain't paid prompt, the confession goes to the noospapers of this enlightened land. I shall git something from them for sech a remarkable doccyment. But, first of all, here an' now, you can make a small payment on the note. Give me that di'mond ring, an' the di'mond pin.Quick!"
A moment later these corruscating gems were swept into Uncle Jap's hand.
"What did they cost ye?"
"Twenty-seven hundred dollars."
"Suffering Moses! Endorse that as paid on the back of the note. Got it down? Yas." Uncle Jap folded up the note and placed it carefully in a large pocket-book. "Now write out, good an' plain, what I tell ye. Ready? Date an' address first. That's right. Now-----"
Obviously, he was pulling himself together for a tremendous literary effort. Mrs. Panel had hold of my arm, and was squeezing it hard. Uncle Jap began--
"'This is to certify that I, Nathaniel Leveson, the undersigned, have been fooling with the wrong end of a mule, viz., Jasper Panel, who's as self-opinionated a critter as ever marched with Sherman to the Sea----' What air you doing?"
Leveson had laid down his pen. "This is farce," he said sharply.
"We'll hev your criticism after the play is over," retorted Uncle Jap decisively. "I'm talkin' now. Pick up that thar pen, and don't lay it down agen till I tell ye, or," the muzzle of the Colt almost touched the perspiring forehead of the Colossus, "or else, by Golly, thar'll be a terr'ble muss to clean up in here to-morrer mornin'. That's better. Lemmee see, whar was I?'Sherman to the Sea,' yas. Now: 'I tried to down Jasper Panel, and he's downed me. I'm a nateral born hog, and I eat with all four feet in the trough.'Underline that, it's good.'I'm big, an sassy, an' full o' meanness, but what sand I've got ain't to be seen with a double-barrelled microscope. I'm as false as Judas; an' Ananias wouldn't be seen walkin' arm in arm with me in the place whar I'd oughter be to-night. I'd steal milk from a blind kitten an' sell it as cream to my own mother five minutes after.'Underline that: it's straight goods. Now then fer the finish.'I wouldn't offer a fair price fer Sunny Bushes, because I aimed ter git it fer nothing. I wouldn't allow others to buy it fer the same reason. I used the power that the Devil give me to prevent a railroad, which I own, furnishin' cars to J. Panel, an' las'ly, I caused money ter be loaned to said J. Panel so's to git him completely under my heel. Also I built a church in San Lorenzy, an' I write these yere lines in the vestry of it as a sorter penance. I swear solemn that this is the first time in my life that I ever tole the truth, an' I'll never do it agen, if I know myself.
"Sign that, an' give it ter me," said Uncle Jap.
Leveson, purple with rage and humiliation, signed it.