IXPHANTOM GOLD
Youwould have to have seen it to have gathered a true impression—the stubby roughness of the country, the rocks, the poverty of the soil, the poorness of the houses, barns, agricultural implements, horses and cattle and even human beings, in consequence—especially human beings, for why should they, any more than any other product of the soil, flourish where all else was so poor?
It was old Judge Blow who first discovered that “Jack,” or zinc, was the real riches of Taney, if it could be said to have had any before “Jack” was discovered. Months before the boom began he had stood beside a smelter in far-off K—— one late winter afternoon and examined with a great deal of care the ore which the men were smelting, marveling at its resemblance to certain rocks or boulders known as “slug lumps” in his home county.
“What is this stuff?” he asked of one of the bare-armed men who came out from the blazing furnace after a time to wipe his dripping face.
“Zinc,” returned the other, as he passed his huge, soiled palm over his forehead.
“We have stuff down in our county that looks like that,” said the judge as he turned the dull-looking lump over and considered for a while. “I’m sure of it—any amount.” Then he became suddenly silent, for a thought struck him.
“Well, if it’s really ‘Jack,’” said the workman, using the trade or mining name for it, “there’s money in it, all right. This here comes from St. Francis.”
The old judge thought of this for a little while and quietly turned away. He knew where St. Francis was. If this was so valuable that they could ship it all the way from southeast B——, why not from Taney? Had he not many holdings in Taney?
The result was that before long a marked if secret change began to manifest itself in Taney and regions adjacent thereto. Following the private manipulations and goings to and fro of the judge one or two shrewd prospectors appeared, and then after a time the whole land was rife with them. But before that came to pass many a farmer who had remained in ignorance of the value of his holdings was rifled of them.
Old Bursay Queeder, farmer and local ne’er-do-well in the agricultural line, had lived on his particular estate or farm for forty years, and at the time that Judge Blow was thus mysteriously proceeding to and fro and here and there upon the earth, did not know that the rocks against which his pair of extra large feet were being regularly and bitterly stubbed contained the very wealth of which he had been idly and rather wistfully dreaming all his life. Indeed, the earth was a very mysterious thing to Bursay, containing, as it did, everything he really did not know. This collection of seventy acres, for instance—which individually and collectively had wrung more sweat from his brow and more curses from his lips than anything else ever had—contained, unknown to him, the possibility of the fulfilment of all his dreams. But he was old now and a little queer in the head at times, having notions in regard to the Bible, when the world would come to an end, and the like, although still able to contend with nature, if not with man. Each day in the spring and summer and even fall seasons he could be seen on some portion or other of his barren acres, his stubby beard and sparse hair standing out roughly, his fingers like a bird’s claws clutching his plough handles, turning the thin and meagre furrows of his fields and rattling the stony soil, which had long ceased to yieldhim even a modicum of profit. It was a bare living now which he expected, and a bare living which he received. The house, or cabin, which he occupied with his wife and son and daughter, was dilapidated beyond the use or even need of care. The fences were all decayed save for those which had been built of these same impediments of the soil which he had always considered a queer kind of stone, useless to man or beast—a “hendrance,” as he would have said. His barn was a mere accumulation of patchboards, shielding an old wagon and some few scraps of machinery. And the alleged corn crib was so aged and lopsided that it was ready to fall. Weeds and desolation, bony horses and as bony children, stony fields and thin trees, and withal solitude and occasional want—such was the world of his care and his ruling.
Mrs. Queeder was a fitting mate for the life to which he was doomed. It had come to that pass with her that the monotony of deprivation was accepted with indifference. The absence or remoteness of even a single modest school, meeting house or town hall, to say nothing of convenient neighbors, had left her and hers all but isolated. She was irascible, cantankerous, peculiar; her voice was shrill and her appearance desolate. Queeder, whom she understood or misunderstood thoroughly, was a source of comfort in one way—she could “nag at him,” as he said, and if they quarreled frequently it was in a fitting and harmonious way. Amid such a rattletrap of fields and fences bickering was to be expected.
“Why don’t yuh take them thar slug lumps an’ make a fence over thar?” she asked of Queeder for something like the thousandth time in ten years, referring to as many as thirty-five piles of the best and almost pure zinc lying along the edges of the nearest field, and piled there by Bursay,—this time because two bony cows had invaded one of their corn patches. The “slug lumps” to which she referred could not have been worth less than $2,000.
For as many as the thousandth time he had replied:
“Well, fer the land sakes, hain’t I never got nuthin’ else tuh do? Yuh’d think them thar blame-ding rocks wuz wuth more nor anythin’ else. I do well enough ez ’tis to git ’em outen the sile, I say, ‘thout tryin’ tuh make fences outen ’em.”
“So yuh say—yuh lazy, good-fer-nuthin’ ole tobacco-chewin’ ——,” here a long list of expletives which was usually succeeded by a stove lid or poker or a fair-sized stick of wood, propelled by one party or the other, and which was as deftly dodged. Love and family affection, you see, due to unbroken and unbreakable propinquity, as it were.
But to proceed: The hot and rainy seasons had come and gone in monotonous succession during a period of years, and the lumps still lay in the field. Dode, the eldest child and only son—a huge, hulking, rugged and yet bony ignoramus, who had not inherited an especially delicate or agreeable disposition from his harried parents—might have removed them had he not been a “consarned lazy houn’,” his father said, or like his father, as his mother said, and Jane, the daughter, might have helped, but these two partook of the same depressed indifference which characterized the father. And why not, pray? They had worked long, had had little, seen less and hoped for no particular outlet for their lives in the future, having sense enough to know that if fate had been more kind there might have been. Useless contention with an unyielding soil had done its best at hardening their spirits.
“I don’t see no use ploughin’ the south patch,” Dode had now remarked for the third time this spring. “The blamed thing don’t grow nuthin’.”
“Ef yuh only half ’tended it instid o’ settin’ out thar under them thar junipers pickin’ yer teeth an’ meditatin’, mebbe ’twould,” squeaked Mrs. Queeder, always petulant or angry or waspish—a nature soured by long and hopeless and useless contention.
“No use shakin’ up a lot uv rocks, ez I see,” returnedDode, wearily and aimlessly slapping at a fly. “The hull place ain’t wuth a hill o’ beans,” and from one point of view he was right.
“Why don’t yuh git off’n hit then?” suggested Queeder in a tantalizing voice, with no particular desire to defend the farm, merely with an idle wish to vary the monotony. “Ef hit’s good enough tuh s’port yuh, hit’s good enough to work on, I say.”
“S’port!” sniffed the undutiful Dode, wearily, and yet humorously and scornfully. “I ain’t seed much s’port, ez I kin remember. Mebbe ye’re thinkin’ uv all the fine schoolin’ I’ve had, er the places I’ve been.” He slapped at another fly.
Old Queeder felt the sneer, but as he saw it it was scarcely his fault. He had worked. At the same time he felt the futility of quarreling with Dode, who was younger and stronger and no longer, owing to many family quarrels, bearing him any filial respect. As a matter of fact it was the other way about. From having endured many cuffs and blows in his youth Dode was now much the more powerful physically, and in any contest could easily outdo his father; and Queeder, from at first having ruled and seen his word law, was now compelled to take second, even third and fourth, place, and by contention and all but useless snarling gain the very little consideration that he received.
But in spite of all this they lived together indifferently. And day after day—once Judge Blow had returned to Taney—time was bringing nearer and nearer the tide of mining and the amazing boom that went with it. Indeed every day, like a gathering storm cloud, it might have been noted by the sensitive as approaching closer and closer, only these unwitting holders were not sensitive. They had not the slightest inkling as yet of all that was to be. Here in this roadless, townless region how was one to know. Prospectors passed to the north and the south of them; but as yet none had ever come directly to this wonderful patch uponwhich Queeder and his family rested. It was in too out-of-the-way a place—a briary, woodsy, rocky corner.
Then one sunny June morning—
“Hi, thar!” called Cal Arnold, their next neighbor, who lived some three miles further on, who now halted his rickety wagon and bony horses along the road opposite the field in which Queeder was working. “Hyur the news?” He spoke briskly, shifting his cud of tobacco and eyeing Queeder with the chirpiness of one who brings diverting information.
“No; what?” asked Queeder, ceasing his “cultivating” with a worn one-share plough and coming over and leaning on his zinc fence, rubbing a hand through his sparse hair the while.
“Ol’ Dunk Porter down here to Newton’s sold his farm,” replied Cal, shrewdly and jubilantly, as though he were relating the tale of a great battle or the suspected approach of the end of the world. “An’ he got three thousan’ dollars fer it.” He rolled the sum deliciously under his tongue.
“Yuh don’t say!” said Queeder quietly but with profound and amazed astonishment. “Three thousan’?” He stirred as one who hears of the impossible being accomplished and knows it can’t be true. “Whut fer?”
“They ’low now ez how thar’s min’l onto it,” went on the farmer wisely. “They ’low ez how now this hyur hull kentry round hyur is thick an’ spilin’ with it. Hit’s uvrywhar. They tell me ez how these hyur slug lumps”—and he flicked at one of the large piles of hitherto worthless zinc against which Queeder was leaning—“is this hyur min’l—er ‘Jack,’ ez they call hit—an’ that hit’s wuth two cents a pound when it’s swelted” (“smelted,” he meant) “an’ even more. I see yuh got quite a bit uv hit. So’ve I. Thar’s a lot layin’ down around my place. I allus ’lowed ez how ’twant wuth much o’ anythin,’ but they say ’tis. I hyur from some o’ the boys ’at’s been to K—— that when hit’s fixed up, swelted and like o’ that, that hit’s good fer lots of things.”
He did not know what exactly, so he did not stop to explain. Instead he cocked a dreamful eye, screwed up his mouth preparatory to expectorating and looked at Queeder. The latter, unable to adjust his thoughts to this new situation, picked up a piece of the hitherto despised “slug” and looked at it. To think that through all these years of toil and suffering he should have believed it worthless and now all of a sudden it was worth two cents a pound when “swelted” and that neighbors were beginning to sell their farms for princely sums!—and his farm was covered with this stuff, this gold almost! Why, there were whole hummocks of it raising slaty-gray backs to the hot sun further on, a low wall in one place where it rose sheer out of the ground on this “prupetty,” as he always referred to it. Think of that! Think of that! But although he thought much he said nothing, for in his starved and hungry brain was beginning to sprout and flourish a great and wondrous idea. He was to have money, wealth—ease, no less! Think of it! Not to toil and sweat in the summer sun any more, to loaf and dream at his ease, chew all the tobacco he wished, live in town, visit far-off, mysterious K——, see all there was to see!
“Well, I guess I’ll be drivin’ on,” commented Arnold after a time, noting Queeder’s marked abstraction. “I cal’late tuh git over tuh Bruder’s an’ back by sundown. He’s got a little hay I traded him a pig fer hyur a while back,” and he flicked his two bony horses and was off up the rubbly, dusty road.
For a time Queeder was scarcely satisfied to believe his senses. Was it really true? Had Porter really sold his place? For days thereafter, although he drove to Arno—sixteen miles away—to discover the real truth, he held his own counsel, nursing a wonderful fancy. This property was his, not his wife’s, nor his two children’s. Years before he had worked and paid for it, a few lone dollars at a time, or their equivalent in corn, pigs, wheat, before he had married. Now—now—soon one of those strange creatures—a“prowspector,” Arnold had called him—who went about with money would come along and buy up his property. Wonderful! Wonderful! What would he get for it?—surely five thousand dollars, considering that Porter had received three for forty acres, whereas he had seventy. Four thousand, anyhow—a little more than Dunk. He could not figure it very well, but it would be more than Dunk’s, whatever it was—probably five thousand!
The one flaw in all this though—and it was a great flaw—was the thought of his savage and unkindly family—the recalcitrant Dode, the angular Jane and his sour better half, Emma—who would now probably have to share in all this marvelous prosperity, might even take it away from him and push him into that background where he had been for so long. They were so much more dogmatic, forceful than he. He was getting old, feeble even, from long years of toil. His wife had done little this long time but sneer and jeer at him, as he now chose most emphatically to remember; his savage son the same. Jane, the indifferent, who looked on him as a failure and a ne’er-do-well, had done nothing but suggest that he work harder. Love, family tenderness, family unity—if these had ever existed they had long since withered in the thin, unnourishing air of this rough, poverty-stricken world. What did he owe any of them? Nothing. And now they would want to share in all this, of course. Having lived so long with them, and under such disagreeable conditions, he now wondered how they would dare suggest as much, and still he knew they would. Fight him, nag him, that’s all they had ever done. But now that wealth was at his door they would be running after him, fawning upon him—demanding it of him, perhaps! What should he do? How arrange for all of this?—for wealth was surely close to his hands. It must be. Like a small, half-intelligent rat he peeked and perked. His demeanor changed to such an extent that even his family noticed it and began to wonder, although (knowing nothingof all that had transpired as yet) they laid it to the increasing queerness of age.
“Have yuh noticed how Pap acts these hyur days?” Dode inquired of Jane and his mother one noontime after old Queeder had eaten and returned to the fields. “He’s all the time standin’ out thar at the fence lookin’ aroun’ ez if he wuz a-waitin’ fer somebody er thinkin’ about somepin. Mebbe he’s gittin’ a little queer, huh? Y’ think so?”
Dode was most interested in anything which concerned his father—or, rather, his physical or mental future—for once he died this place would have to be divided or he be called upon to run it, and in that case he would be a fitting catch for any neighborhood farming maiden, and as such able to broach and carry through the long-cherished dream of matrimony, now attenuated and made all but impossible by the grinding necessities he was compelled to endure.
“Yes, I’ve been noticin’ somepin,” returned Mrs. Queeder. “He hain’t the same ez he wuz a little while back. Some new notion he’s got into his mind, I reckon, somepin he wants tuh do an’ kain’t, er somepin new in ’ligion, mebbe. Yuh kain’t ever tell whut’s botherin’ him.”
Jane “’lowed” as much and the conversation ended. But still Queeder brooded, trying to solve the knotty problem, which depended, of course, on the open or secret sale of the land—secret, if possible, he now finally decided, seeing that his family had always been so unkind to him. They deserved nothing better. It was his—why not?
In due time appeared a prospector, mounted on horseback and dressed for rough travel, who, looking over the fields of this area and noting the value of these particular acres, the surface outcropping of a thick vein, became intensely interested. Queeder was not to be seen at the time, having gone to some remote portion of the farm, but Mrs. Queeder, wholly ignorant of the value of the land and therefore of the half-suppressed light in the stranger’s eye, greeted him pleasantly enough.
“Would you let me have a drink of water?” inquired the stranger when she appeared at the door.
“Sartinly,” she replied with a tone of great respect. Even comparatively well-dressed strangers were so rare here.
Old Queeder in a distant field observing him at the well, now started for the house.
“What is that stuff you make your fences out of?” asked the stranger agreeably, wondering if they knew.
“Well, now, I dunno,” said Mrs. Queeder. “It’s some kind o’ stone, I reckon—slug lumps, we uns always call hit aroun’ hyur.”
The newcomer suppressed a desire to smile and stooped to pick up a piece of the zinc with which the ground was scattered. It was the same as he had seen some miles back, only purer and present in much greater quantities. Never had he seen more and better zinc near the surface. It was lying everywhere exposed, cultivation, frosts and rains having denuded it, whereas in the next county other men were digging for it. The sight of these dilapidated holdings, the miserable clothing, old Queeder toiling out in the hot fields, and all this land valueless for agriculture because of its wondrous mineral wealth, was almost too much for him.
“Do you own all this land about here?” he inquired.
“’Bout seventy acres,” returned Mrs. Queeder.
“Do you know what it sells at an acre?”
“No. It ain’t wuth much, though, I reckon. I ain’t heerd o’ none bein’ sold aroun’ hyur fer some time now.”
The prospector involuntarily twitched at the words “not wuth much.” What would some of his friends and rivals say if they knew of this particular spot? What if some one should tell these people? If he could buy it now for a song, as he well might! Already other prospectors were in the neighborhood. Had he not eaten at the same table at Arno with three whom he suspected as such? He must get this, and get it now.
“I guess I’ll stroll over and talk to your husband a moment,”he remarked and ambled off, the while Mrs. Queeder and Jane, the twain in loose blue gingham bags of dresses much blown by the wind, stood in the tumbledown doorway and looked after him.
“Funny, ain’t he?” said the daughter. “Wonder whut he wants o’ Paw?”
Old Queeder looked up quizzically from his ploughing, to which he had returned, as he saw the stranger approaching, and now surveyed him doubtfully as he offered a cheery “Good morning.”
“Do you happen to know if there is any really good farming land around here for sale?” inquired the prospector after a few delaying comments about the weather.
“Air yuh wantin’ it fer farmin’?” replied Queeder cynically and casting a searching look upon the newcomer, who saw at once by Queeder’s eye that he knew more than his wife. “They’re buyin’ hit now mostly fer the min’l ez is onto it, ez I hyur.” At the same time he perked like a bird to see how this thrust had been received.
The prospector smiled archly if wisely. “I see,” he said. “You think it’s good for mining, do you? What would you hold your land at as mineral land then if you had a chance to sell it?”
Queeder thought for a while. Two wood doves cooed mournfully in the distance and a blackbird squeaked rustily before he answered.
“I dunno ez I keer tuh sell yit.” He had been getting notions of late as to what might be done if he were to retain his land, bid it up against the desires of one and another, only also the thought of how his wife and children might soon learn and insist on dividing the profits with him if he did sell it was haunting him. Those dreams of getting out in the world and seeing something, of getting away from his family and being happy in some weird, free way, were actually torturing him.
“Who owns the land just below here, then?” asked thestranger, realizing that his idea of buying for little or nothing might as well be abandoned. But at this Queeder winced. For after all, the land adjoining had considerable mineral on it also, as he well knew.
“Why, let me see,” he replied waspishly, with mingled feelings of opposition and indifference. “Marradew,” he finally added, grudgingly. It was no doubt true that this stranger or some other could buy of other farmers if he refused to sell. Still, land around here anywhere must be worth something, his as much as any other. If Dunk Porter had received $3,000—
“If you don’t want to sell, I suppose he might,” the prospector continued pleasantly. The idea was expressed softly, meditatively, indifferently almost.
There was a silence, in which Queeder calmly leaned on his plough handles thinking. The possibility of losing this long-awaited opportunity was dreadful. But he was not floored yet, for all his hunger and greed. Arnold had said that the metal alone, these rocks, was worth two cents a pound, and he could not get it out of his mind that somehow the land itself, the space of soil aside from the metal, must be worth something. How could it be otherwise? Small crops of sorts grew on it.
“I dunno,” he replied defiantly, if internally weakly. “Yuh might ast. I ain’t heerd o’ his wantin’ to sell.” He was determined to risk this last if he had to run after the stranger afterward and beg him to compromise, although he hoped not to have to do that, either. There were other prospectors.
“I don’t know yet whether I want this,” continued the prospector heavily and with an air of profound indifference, “but I’d like to have an option on it, if you’d like to sell. What’ll you take for an option at sixty days on the entire seventy acres?”
The worn farmer did not in the least understand what was meant by the word option, but he was determined notto admit it. “Whut’ll yuh give?” he asked finally, in great doubt as to what to say.
“Well, how about $200 down and $5,000 more at the end of sixty days if we come to terms at the end of that time?” He was offering the very lowest figure that he imagined Queeder would take, if any, for he had heard of other sales in this vicinity this very day.
Queeder, not knowing what an option was, knew not what to say. Five thousand was what he had originally supposed he might be offered, but sixty days! What did he mean by that? Why not at once if he wanted the place—cash—as Dunk Porter, according to Arnold, had received? He eyed the stranger feverishly, fidgeted with his plough handles, and finally observed almost aimlessly: “I ’low ez I could git seven thousan’ any day ef I wanted to wait. The feller hyur b’low me a ways got three thousan’, an’ he’s got thirty acres less’n I got. Thar’s been a feller aroun’ hyur offerin’ me six thousan’.”
“Well, I might give you $6,000, providing I found the ground all right,” he said.
“Cash down?” asked Queeder amazedly, kicking at a clod.
“Within sixty days,” answered the prospector.
“Oh!” said Queeder, gloomily. “I thort yuh wanted tuh buy t’day.”
“Oh, no,” said the other. “I said an option. If we come to terms I’ll be back here with the money within sixty days or before, and we’ll close the thing up—six thousand in cash, minus the option money. Of course I don’t bind myself absolutely to buy—just get the privilege of buying at any time within sixty days, and if I don’t come back within that time the money I turn over to you to-day is yours, see, and you’re free to sell the land to some one else.”
“Huh!” grunted Queeder. He had dreamed of getting the money at once and making off all by himself, but here was this talk of sixty days, which might mean something or nothing.
“Well,” said the prospector, noting Queeder’s dissatisfaction and deciding that he must do something to make thedeal seem more attractive, “suppose we say seven thousand, then, and I put down $500 cash into your hands now? How’s that? Seven thousand in sixty days and five hundred in cash right now. What do you say?”
He reached in his pocket and extracted a wallet thick with bills, which excited Queeder greatly. Never had so much ready money, which he might quickly count as his if he chose, been so near him. After all, $500 in cash was an amazing amount in itself. With that alone what could he not do? And then the remainder of the seven thousand within sixty days! Only, there were his wife and two children to consider. If he was to carry out his dream of decamping there must be great secrecy. If they learned of this—his possession of even so much as five hundred in cash—what might not happen? Would not Dode or his wife or Jane, or all three, take it away from him—steal it while he was asleep? It might well be so. He was so silent and puzzled that the stranger felt that he was going to reject his offer.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said, as though he were making a grand concession. “I’ll make it eight thousand and put up eight hundred. How’s that? If we can’t arrange it on that basis we’ll have to drop the matter, for I can’t offer to pay any more,” and at that he returned the wallet to his pocket.
But Queeder still gazed, made all but dumb by his good fortune and the difficulties it presented. Eight thousand! Eight hundred in cash down! He could scarcely understand.
“T’day?” he asked.
“Yes, to-day—only you’ll have to come with me to Arno. I want to look into your title. Maybe you have a deed, though—have you?”
Queeder nodded.
“Well, if it’s all right I’ll pay you the money at once. I have a form of agreement here and we can get some one towitness it, I suppose. Only we’ll have to get your wife to sign, too.”
Queeder’s face fell. Here was the rub—his wife and two children! “She’s gotta sign, hez she?” he inquired grimly, sadly even. He was beside himself with despair, disgust. To work and slave so all these years! Then, when a chance came, to have it all come to nothing, or nearly so!
“Yes,” said the prospector, who saw by his manner and tone that his wife’s knowledge of it was not desired. “We’ll have to get her signature, too. I’m sorry if it annoys you, but the law compels it. Perhaps you could arrange all that between you in some way. Why not go over and talk to her about it?”
Queeder hesitated. How he hated it—this sharing with his wife and son! He didn’t mind Jane so much. But now if they heard of it they would quarrel with him and want the larger share. He would have to fight—stand by his “rights.” And once he had the money—if he ever got it—he would have to watch it, hide it, to keep it away from them.
“What’s the matter?” asked the prospector, noting his perturbation. “Does she object to your selling?”
“’Tain’t that. She’ll sell, well enough, once she hyurs. I didn’t ’low ez I’d let ’er know at fust. She’ll be wantin’ the most uv it—her an’ Dode—an’ hit ain’t ther’n, hit’s mine. I wuz on hyur fust. I owned this hyur place fust, ’fore ever I saw ’er. She don’t do nuthin’ but fuss an’ fight, ez ’tis.”
“Supposing we go over to the house and talk to her. She may not be unreasonable. She’s only entitled to a third, you know, if you don’t want to give her more than that. That’s the law. That would leave you nearly five thousand. In fact, if you want it, I’ll see that you get five thousand whatever she gets.” He had somehow gathered the impression that five thousand, for himself, meant a great deal to Queeder.
And true enough, at that the old farmer brightened alittle. For five thousand? Was not that really more than he had expected to get for the place as a whole but an hour before! And supposing his wife did get three thousand? What of it? Was not his own dream coming true? He agreed at once and decided to accompany the prospector to the house. But on the way the farmer paused and gazed about him. He was as one who scarcely knew what he was doing. All this money—this new order of things—if it went through! He felt strange, different, confused. The mental ills of his many years plus this great fortune with its complications and possibilities were almost too much for him. The stranger noted a queer metallic and vacant light in the old farmer’s eyes as he now turned slowly about from west to east, staring.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, a suspicion of insanity coming to him.
The old man seemed suddenly to come to. “’Tain’t nuthin’,” he said. “I wuz just thinkin’.”
The prospector meditated on the validity of a contract made with a lunatic, but the land was too valuable to bother about trifles. Once a contract was made, even with a half-wit, the legal difficulties which could be made over any attempt to break the agreement would be very great.
In the old cabin Jane and her mother wondered at the meaning of the approaching couple, but old Queeder shooed off the former as he would have a chicken. Once inside the single room, which served as parlor, sitting-room, bedroom and all else convenient, Queeder nervously closed the door leading into the kitchen, where Jane had retired.
“Go on away, now,” he mumbled, as he saw her there hanging about. “We want a word with yer Maw, I tell yuh.”
Lank Jane retired, but later clapped a misshapen ear to the door until she was driven away by her suspicious father. Then the farmer began to explain to his wife what it was all about.
“This hyur stranger—I don’t know your name yit—”
“Crawford! Crawford!” put in the prospector.
“Crawford—Mr. Crawford—is hyur tuh buy the place ef he kin. I thought, seein’ ez how yuh’ve got a little int’est in it—third”—he was careful to add—“we’d better come an’ talk tuh yuh.”
“Int’est!” snapped Mrs. Queeder, sharply and suspiciously, no thought of the presence of the stranger troubling her in her expression of her opinion, “I should think I had—workin’ an’ slavin’ on it fer twenty-four year! Well, whut wuz yuh thinkin’ uv payin’ fer the place?” she asked of the stranger sharply.
A nervous sign from Queeder, whose acquisitiveness was so intense that it was almost audible, indicated that he was not to say.
“Well, now what do you think it would be worth?”
“Dunno ez I kin say exackly,” replied the wife slyly and greedily, imagining that Queeder, because of his age and various mental deficiencies was perhaps leaving these negotiations to her. “Thar’s ben furms aroun’ hyur ez big’s this sold fer nigh onto two thousan’ dollars.” She was quoting the topmost figure of which she had ever heard.
“Well, that’s pretty steep, isn’t it?” asked Crawford solemnly but refusing to look at Queeder. “Ordinarily land around here is not worth much more than twenty dollars an acre and you have only seventy, as I understand.”
“Yes, but this hyur land ain’t so pore ez some, nuther,” rejoined Mrs. Queeder, forgetting her original comment on it and making the best argument she could for it. “Thar’s a spring on this hyur one, just b’low the house hyur.”
“Yes,” said Crawford, “I saw it as I came in. It has some value. So you think two thousand is what it’s worth, do you?” He looked at Queeder wisely, as much as to say, “This is a good joke, Queeder.”
Mrs. Queeder, fairly satisfied that hers was to be the dominant mind in this argument, now turned to her husband for counsel. “What do yuh think, Bursay?” she asked.
Queeder, shaken by his duplicity, his fear of discovery, hisgreed and troublesome dreams, gazed at her nervously. “I sartinly think hit’s wuth that much anyhow.”
Crawford now began to explain that he only wanted an option on it at present, an agreement to sell within a given time, and if this were given, a paper signed, he would pay a few dollars to bind the bargain—and at this he looked wisely at Queeder and half closed one eye, by which the latter understood that he was to receive the sum originally agreed upon.
“If you say so we’ll close this right now,” he said ingratiatingly, taking from his pockets a form of agreement and opening it. “I’ll just fill this in and you two can sign it.” He went to the worn poplar table and spread out his paper, the while Queeder and his wife eyed the proceeding with intense interest. Neither could read or write but the farmer, not knowing how he was to get his eight hundred, could only trust to the ingenuity of the prospector to solve the problem. Besides, both were hypnotized by the idea of selling this worthless old land so quickly and for so much, coming into possession of actual money, and moved and thought like people in a dream. Mrs. Queeder’s eyelids had narrowed to thin, greedy lines.
“How much did yuh cal’late yuh’d give tuh bind this hyur?” she inquired tensely and with a feverish gleam in her eye.
“Oh,” said the stranger, who was once more looking at Queeder with an explanatory light in his eye, “about a hundred dollars, I should say. Wouldn’t that be enough?”
A hundred dollars! Even that sum in this lean world was a fortune. To Mrs. Queeder, who knew nothing of the value of the mineral on the farm, it was unbelievable, an unexplainable windfall, an augury of better things. And besides, the two thousand to come later! But now came the question of a witness and how the paper was to be signed. The prospector, having filled in (in pencil) a sample acknowledgment of the amount paid—$100—and then having said, “Now you sign here, Mr. Queeder,” the latterreplied, “But I kain’t write an’ nuther kin my wife.”
“Thar wuzn’t much chance fer schoolin’ around’ hyur when I wuz young,” simpered his better half.
“Well then, we’ll just have to let you make your marks, and get some one to witness them. Can your son or daughter write?”
Here was a new situation and one most unpleasant to both, for Dode, once called, would wish to rule, being so headstrong and contrary. He could write his name anyhow, read a little bit also—but did they want him to know yet? Husband and wife looked at each dubiously and with suspicion. What now? The difficulty was solved by the rumble of a wagon on the nearby road.
“Maybe that is some one who could witness for you?” suggested Crawford.
Queeder looked out. “Yes, I b’lieve he kin write,” he commented. “Hi, thar, Lester!” he called. “Come in hyur a minute! We wantcha fer somepin.”
The rumbling ceased and in due time one Lester Botts, a farmer, not so much better in appearance than Queeder, arrived at the door. The prospector explained what was wanted and the agreement was eventually completed, only Botts, not knowing of the mineral which Queeder’s acres represented, was anxious to tell the prospector of better land than this, from an agricultural view, which could be had for less money, but he did not know how to go about it. Before she would sign, Mrs. Queeder made it perfectly clear where she stood in the matter.
“I git my sheer uv this hyur money now, don’t I,” she demanded, “paid tuh me right hyur?”
Crawford, uncertain as to Queeder’s wishes in this, looked at him; and he, knowing his wife’s temper and being moved by greed, exclaimed, “Yuh don’t git nuthin’ ’ceptin’ I die. Yuh ain’t entitled tuh no sheer unless’n we’re separatin’, which we hain’t.”
“Then I don’t sign nuthin’,” said Mrs. Queeder truculently.
“Of course I don’t want to interfere,” commented the prospector, soothingly, “but I should think you’d rather give her her share of this—thirty-three dollars,” he eyed Queeder persuasively—“and then possibly a third of the two thousand—that’s only six hundred and sixty—rather than stop the sale now, wouldn’t you? You’ll have to agree to do something like that. It’s a good bargain. There ought to be plenty for everybody.”
The farmer hearkened to the subtlety of this. After all, six hundred and sixty out of eight thousand was not so much. Rather than risk delay and discovery he pretended to soften, and finally consented. The marks were made and their validity attested by Botts, the one hundred in cash being counted out in two piles, according to Mrs. Queeder’s wish, and the agreement pocketed. Then the prospector accompanied by Mr. Botts, was off—only Queeder, following and delaying him, was finally handed over in secret the difference between the hundred and the sum originally agreed upon. When he saw all the money the old farmer’s eyes wiggled as if magnetically operated. Trembling with the agony of greed he waited, and then his hard and knotted fingers closed upon the bills like the claws of a gripping hawk.
“Thank yuh,” he said aloud. “Thank yuh,” and he jerked doorward in distress. “See me alone fust when yuh come ag’in. We gotta be mighty keerful er she’ll find out, an’ ef she does she’ll not sign nuthin’, an’ raise ol’ Harry, too.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” replied the prospector archly. He was thinking how easy it would be, in view of all the dishonesty and chicanery already practised, to insist that the two thousand written in in pencil was the actual sale price and efface old Queeder by threatening to expose his duplicity. However, there were sixty days yet in which to consider this. “In sixty days, maybe less, I’ll show up.” And he slipped gracefully away, leaving the old earth-scraper to brood alone.
But all was not ended with the payment of this sum, as any one might have foretold. For Dode and Jane, hearing after a little while from their mother of the profitable sale of the land, were intensely moved. Money—any money, however small in amount—conjured up visions of pleasure and ease, and who was to get it, after all the toil here on the part of all? Where was their share in all this? They had worked, too. They demanded it in repeated ways, but to no avail. Their mother and father were obdurate, insisting that they wait until the sale was completed before any further consideration was given the matter.
While they were thus arguing, however, quarreling over even so small a sum as $100, as they thought, a new complication was added by Dode learning, as he soon did, that this was all mineral land, that farms were being sold in Adair—the next township—and even here; that it was rumored that Queeder had already sold his land for $5,000, and that if he had he had been beaten, for the land was worth much more—$200 an acre even, or $14,000. At once he suspected his father and mother of some treachery in connection with the sale—that there had been no option given, but a genuine sale made, and that Queeder or his mother, or both, were concealing a vast sum from himself and Jane. An atmosphere of intense suspicion and evil will was at once introduced.
“They’ve sold the furm fer $5,000 ’stid uv $2,000; that’s whut they’ve gone an’ done,” insisted Dode one day to Jane in the presence of his father and mother. “Ev’rybody aroun’ hyur knows now what this hyur land’s wuth, an’ that’s whut they got, yuh kin bet.”
“Yuh lie!” shrieked Queeder shrilly, who was at once struck by the fact that if what Dode said was true he had walked into a financial as well as a moral trap from which he could not well extricate himself. “I hain’t sold nuthin’,” he went on angrily. “Lester Botts wuz hyur an’ seed whut we done. He signed onto it.”
“Ef the land’s wuth more’n $2,000, that feller ’twuz hyurdidn’ agree tuh pay no more’n that fer it in hyur,” put in Mrs. Queeder explanatorily, although, so little did she trust her husband, she was now beginning to wonder if there might not have been some secret agreement between him and this stranger. “Ef he had any different talk with yer Paw,” and here she eyed old Queeder suspiciously, beginning to recall the prospector’s smooth airs and ways, “he didn’ say nuthin’ ’bout it tuh me. I do rec’leck yer Paw’n him talkin’ over by the fence yander near an hour afore they come in hyur. I wondered then whut it wuz about.” She was beginning to worry as to how she was to get more seeing that the price agreed upon was now, apparently, inconsequential.
And as for Dode, he now eyed his father cynically and suspiciously. “I cal’late he got somepin more fer it than he’s tellin’ us about,” he insisted. “They ain’t sellin’ land down to Arno right now fer no $200 an acre an’ him not knowin’ it—an’ land not ez good ez this, nuther. Ye’re hidin’ the money whut yuh got fer it, that’s whut!”
Mrs. Queeder, while greatly disturbed as to the possibility of duplicity on her husband’s part in connection with all this, still considered it policy to call Heaven to witness that in her case at least no duplicity was involved. If more had been offered or paid she knew nothing of it. For his part Queeder boiled with fear, rage, general opposition to all of them and their share in this.
“Yuh consarned varmint!” he squealed, addressing Dode and leaping to his feet and running for a stick of stovewood, “I’ll show yuh whuther we air er not! Yuh ’low I steal, do yuh?”
Dode intercepted him, however, and being the stronger, pushed him off. It was always so easy so to do—much to Queeder’s rage. He despised his son for his triumphant strength alone, to say nothing of his dour cynicism in regard to himself. The argument was ended by the father being put out of the house and the mother pleading volubly that in so far as she knew it was all as she said, that in signing the secret agreement with her husband she had meant no harmto her children, but only to protect them and herself.
But now, brooding over the possibility of Queeder’s deception, she began to lay plans for his discomfiture in any way that she might—she and Dode and Jane. Queeder himself raged secretly between fear and hatred of Dode and what might follow because of his present knowledge. How was he to prevent Dode from being present at the final transaction, and if so how would the secret difference be handed him? Besides, if he took the sum mentioned, how did he know that he was not now being overreached? Every day nearly brought new rumors of new sales at better prices than he had been able to fix. In addition, each day Mrs. Queeder cackled like an irritable hen over the possible duplicity of her husband, although that creature in his secretive greed and queerness was not to be encompassed. He fought shy of the house the greater part of each day, jerked like a rat at every sound or passing stranger and denied himself words to speak or explain, or passed the lie if they pressed him too warmly. The seven hundred extra he had received was wrapped in paper and hidden in a crevice back of a post in the barn, a tin can serving as an outer protection for his newly acquired wealth. More than once during the day he returned to that spot, listened and peeked before he ventured to see whether it was still safe.
Indeed, there was something deadly in the household order from now on, little short of madness in fact, for now mother and children schemed for his downfall while all night long old Queeder wakened, jerking in the blackness and listening for any sounds which might be about the barn. On more than one occasion he changed the hiding place, even going so far as to keep the money on his person for a time. Once he found an old rusty butcher knife and, putting that in his shirt bosom, he slept with it and dreamed of trouble.
Into the heart of this walked another prospector one morning rejoicing, like the first one, at his find. Like all good business men he was concerned to see the owner only and demanded that Queeder be called.
“Oh, Paw!” called Jane from the rickety doorway. “Thar’s some one hyur wants tuh see yuh!”
Old Queeder looked warily up from his hot field, where he had been waiting these many days, and beheld the stranger. He dropped his weed fighting and came forward. Dode drifted in from somewhere.
“Pretty dry weather we’re having, isn’t it?” remarked the stranger pleasantly meeting him halfway in his approach.
“Yes,” he replied vacantly, for he was very, very much worn these days, mentally and physically. “It’s tol’able dry! Tol-able dry!” He wiped his leathery brow with his hand.
“You don’t know of any one about here, do you, who has any land for sale?”
“Ye’re another one uv them min’l prowspecters, I projeck, eh?” inquired Queeder, now quite openly. There was no need to attempt to conceal that fact any longer.
The newcomer was taken aback, for he had not expected so much awareness in this region so soon. “I am,” he said frankly.
“I thought so,” said Queeder.
“Have you ever thought of selling the land here?” he inquired.
“Well, I dunno,” began the farmer shrewdly. “Thar’ve been fellers like yuh aroun’ hyar afore now lookin’ at the place. Whut do yuh cal-late it might be wuth tuh yuh?” He eyed him sharply the while they strolled still further away from the spot where Dode, Jane and the mother formed an audience in the doorway.
The prospector ambled about the place examining the surface lumps, so very plentiful everywhere.
“This looks like fairly good land to me,” he said quietly after a time. “You haven’t an idea how much you’d want an acre for it, have you?”
“Well, I hyur they’re gettin’ ez much ez three hundred down to Arno,” replied Queeder, exaggerating fiercely. Now that a second purchaser had appeared he was eager tolearn how much more, if any, than the original offer would be made.
“Yes—well, that’s a little steep, don’t you think, considering the distance the metal would have to be hauled to the railroad? It’ll cost considerable to get it over there.”
“Not enough, I ’low, tuh make it wuth much less’n three hundred, would it?” observed Queeder, sagely.
“Well, I don’t know about that. Would you take two hundred an acre for as much as forty acres of it?”
Old Queeder pricked his ears at the sound of bargain. As near as he could figure, two hundred an acre for forty acres would bring him as much as he was now to get for the entire seventy, and he would still have thirty to dispose of. The definiteness of the proposition thrilled him, boded something large for his future—eight thousand for forty, and all he could wring from the first comer had been eight thousand for seventy!
“Huh!” he said, hanging on the argument with ease and leisure. “I got an offer uv a option on the hull uv it fer twelve thousan’ now.”
“What!” said the stranger, surveying him critically. “Have you signed any papers in the matter?”
Queeder looked at him for the moment as if he suspected treachery, and then seeing the gathered family surveying them from the distant doorway he made the newcomer a cabalistic sign.
“Come over hyur,” he said, leading off to a distant fence. At the safe distance they halted. “I tell yuh just how ’tis,” he observed very secretively. “Thar wuz a feller come along hyur three er four weeks ago an’ at that time I didn’t know ez how this hyur now wuz min’l, see? An’ he ast me, ’thout sayin’ nuthin’ ez tuh whut he knowed, whut I’d take for it, acre fer acre. Well, thar wuz anuther feller, a neighbor o’ mine, had been along hyur an’ he wuz sayin’ ez how a piece o’ land just below, about forty acres, wuz sold fer five thousan’ dollars. Seein’ ez how my land wuz the same kind o’ land, only better, I ’lowed ez how thar bein’ seventy acreshyur tuh his forty I oughta git nearly twicet ez much, an’ I said so. He didn’t ’low ez I ought at fust, but later on he kind o’ come roun’ an’ we agreed ez how I bein’ the one that fust had the place—I wuz farmin’ hyur ’fore ever I married my wife—that ef any sale wuz made I orter git the biggest sheer. So we kind o’ fixed it up b’tween us, quiet-like an’ not lettin’ anybody else know, that when it come tuh makin’ out the papers an’ sich at the end uv the sixty days he was to gimme a shade the best o’ the money afore we signed any papers. Course I wouldn’t do nuthin’ like that ef the place hadn’t b’longed tuh me in the fust place, an’ ef me an’ my wife an’ chil’n got along ez well’s we did at fust, but she’s allers a-fightin’ an’ squallin’. Ef he come back hyur, ez he ’lowed he would, I wuz t’ have eight thousan’ fer myself, an’ me an’ my wife wuzta divide the rest b’tween us ez best we could, her to have her third, ez the law is.”
The stranger listened with mingled astonishment, amusement and satisfaction at the thought that the contract, if not exactly illegal, could at least to Queeder be made to appear so. For an appeal to the wife must break it, and besides because of the old man’s cupidity he might easily be made to annul the original agreement. For plainly even now this farmer did not know the full value of all that he had so foolishly bartered away. About him were fields literally solid with zinc under the surface. Commercially $60,000 would be a mere bagatelle to give for it, when the East was considered. One million dollars would be a ridiculously low capitalization for a mine based on this property. A hundred thousand might well be his share for his part in the transaction. Good heavens, the other fellow had bought a fortune for a song! It was only fair to try to get it away from him.
“I’ll tell you how this is, Mr. Queeder,” he said after a time. “It looks to me as though this fellow, whoever he is, has given you a little the worst end of this bargain. Your land is worth much more than that, that’s plain enough. But you can get out of that easily enough on the ground that you really didn’t know what you were selling at the time youmade this bargain. That’s the law, I believe. You don’t have to stick by an agreement if it’s made when you don’t understand what you’re doing. As a matter of fact, I think I could get you out of it if you wanted me to. All you would have to do would be to refuse to sign any other papers when the time comes and return the money that’s been paid you. Then when the time came I would be glad to take over your whole farm at three hundred dollars an acre and pay cash down. That would make you a rich man. I’d give you three thousand cash in hand the day you signed an agreement to sell. The trouble is you were just taken in. You and your wife really didn’t know what you were doing.”
“That’s right,” squeaked Queeder, “we wuz. We didn’t ’low ez they wuz any min’l on this when we signed that air contrack.”
Three hundred dollars an acre, as he dumbly figured it out, meant $21,000—twenty-one instead of a wretched eight thousand! For the moment he stood there quite lost as to what to do, say, think, a wavering, element-worn figure. His bent and shriveled body, raked and gutted by misfortune, fairly quivered with the knowledge that riches were really his for the asking, yet also that now, owing to his early error and ignorance in regard to all this, he might not be able to arrange for their reception. His seared and tangled brain, half twisted by solitude, balanced unevenly with the weight of this marvelous possibility. It crossed the wires of his mind and made him see strabismically.
The prospector, uncertain as to what his silence indicated, added: “I might even do a little better than that, Mr. Queeder—say, twenty-five thousand. You could have a house in the city for that. Your wife could wear silk dresses; you yourself need never do another stroke of work; your son and daughter could go to college if they wanted to. All you have to do is to refuse to sign that deed when he comes back—hand him the money or get his address and let me send it to him.”
“He swindled me, so he did!” Queeder almost shouted now, great beads of sweat standing out upon his brow. “He tried tuh rob me! He shan’t have an acre, by God—not an acre!”
“That’s right,” said the newcomer, and before he left he again insinuated into the farmer’s mind the tremendous and unfair disproportion between twelve (as he understood Queeder was receiving) and twenty-five thousand. He pictured the difference in terms of city or town opportunities, the ease of his future life.
Unfortunately, the farmer possessed no avenue by which to escape from his recent duplicity. Having deceived his wife and children over so comparatively small a sum as eight thousand, this immensely greater sum offered many more difficulties—bickering, quarreling, open fighting, perhaps, so fierce were Dode and his wife in their moods, before it could be attained. And was he equal to it? At the same time, although he had never had anything, he was now feeling as though he had lost a great deal, as if some one were endeavoring to take something immense away from him, something which he had always had!
During the days that followed he brooded over this, avoiding his family as much as possible, while they, wondering when the first prospector would return and what conversation or arrangement Queeder had had with the second, watched him closely. At last he was all but unbalanced mentally, and by degrees his mind came to possess but one idea, and that was that his wife, his children, the world, all were trying to rob him, and that his one escape lay in flight with his treasure if only he could once gain possession of it. But how? How? One thing was sure. They should not have it. He would fight first; he would die. And alone in his silent field, with ragged body and mind, he brooded over riches and felt as if he already had them to defend.
In the meanwhile the first prospector had been meditating as to the ease, under the circumstances, with which Queeder’s land could be taken from him at the very nominal priceof two thousand, considering the secrecy which, according to Queeder’s own wish, must attach to the transfer of all moneys over that sum. Once the deed was signed—the same reading for two thousand—in the presence of the wife and a lawyer who should accompany him, how easy to walk off and pay no more, standing calmly on the letter of the contract!
It was nearing that last day now and the terrible suspense was telling. Queeder was in no mental state to endure anything. His hollow eyes showed the wondering out of which nothing had come. His nervous strolling here and there had lost all semblance of reason. Then on the last of the sixty allotted days there rode forward the now bane of his existence, the original prospector, accompanied by Attorney Giles, of Arno, a veritable scamp and rascal of a lawyer.
At first on seeing them Queeder felt a strong impulse to run away, but on second consideration he feared so to do. The land was his. If he did not stay Dode and Mrs. Queeder might enter on some arrangement without his consent—something which would leave him landless, money-less—or they might find out something about the extra money he had taken and contracted for, the better price he was now privately to receive. It was essential that he stay, and yet he had no least idea as to how he would solve it all.
Jane, who was in the doorway as they entered the yard, was the one to welcome them, although Dode, watchful and working in a nearby patch, saluted them next. Then Mrs. Queeder examined them cynically and with much opposition. These, then, were the twain who were expecting to misuse her financially!
“Where’s your father, Dode?” asked Attorney Giles familiarly, for he knew them well.
“Over thar in the second ’tater patch,” answered Dode sourly. A moment later he added with rough calculation, “Ef ye’re comin’ about the land, though, I ’low ez ’twon’t do yuh no good. Maw an’ Paw have decided not tuh sell. The place is wuth a heap more’n whut you all’re offerin’. They’re sellin’ land roun’ Arno with not near ez muchmin’l onto hit ez this hez for three hundred now, an’ yuh all only wanta give two thousan’ fer the hull place, I hyur. Maw’n Paw’d be fools ef they’d agree tuh that.”
“Oh, come now,” exclaimed Giles placatively and yet irritably—a very wasp who was always attempting to smooth over the ruffled tempers of people on just such trying occasions as this. “Mr. Crawford here has an option on this property signed by your mother and father and witnessed by a Mr.”—he considered the slip—“a Mr. Botts—oh, yes, Lester Botts. You cannot legally escape that. All Mr. Crawford has to do is to offer you the money—leave it here, in fact—and the property is his. That is the law. An option is an option, and this one has a witness. I don’t see how you can hope to escape it, really.”
“They wuzn’t nuthin’ said about no min’l when I signed that air,” insisted Mrs. Queeder, “an’ I don’t ’low ez no paper whut I didn’t know the meanin’ uv is goin’ tuh be good anywhar. Leastways, I won’t put my name onto nuthin’ else.”
“Well, well!” said Mr. Giles fussily, “We’d better get Mr. Queeder in here and see what he says to this. I’m sure he’ll not take any such unreasonable and illegal view.”
In the meantime old Queeder, called for lustily by Jane, came edging around the house corner like some hunted animal—dark, fearful, suspicious—and at sight of him the prospector and lawyer, who had seated themselves, arose.
“Well, here we are, Mr. Queeder,” said the prospector, but stopped, astonished at the weird manner in which Queeder passed an aimless hand over his brow and gazed almost dully before him. He had more the appearance of a hungry bird than a human being. He was yellow, emaciated, all but wild.
“Look at Paw!” whispered Jane to Dode, used as she was to all the old man’s idiosyncrasies.
“Yes, Mr. Queeder,” began the lawyer, undisturbed by the whisper of Jane and anxious to smooth over a very troublesome situation, “here we are. We have come tosettle this sale with you according to the terms of the option. I suppose you’re ready?”
“Whut?” asked old Queeder aimlessly, then, recovering himself slightly, began, “I hain’t goin’ tuh sign nuthin’! Nuthin’ ’tall! That’s whut I hain’t! Nuthin’!” He opened and closed his fingers and twisted and craned his neck as though physically there were something very much awry with him.
“What’s that?” queried the lawyer incisively, attempting by his tone to overawe him or bring him to his senses, “not sign? What do you mean by saying you won’t sign? You gave an option here for the sum of $100 cash in hand, signed by you and your wife and witnessed by Lester Botts, and now you say you won’t sign! I don’t want to be harsh, but there’s a definite contract entered into here and money passed, and such things can’t be handled in any such light way, Mr. Queeder. This is a contract, a very serious matter before the law, Mr. Queeder, a very serious matter. The law provides a very definite remedy in a case of this kind. Whether you want to sign or not, with this option we have here and what it calls for we can pay over the money before witnesses and enter suit for possession and win it.”
“Not when a feller’s never knowed whut he wuz doin’ when he signed,” insisted Dode, who by now, because of his self-interest and the appearance of his father having been misled, was coming round to a more sympathetic or at least friendly attitude.
“I’ll not sign nuthin’,” insisted Queeder grimly. “I hain’t a-goin’ tuh be swindled out o’ my prupetty. I never knowed they wuz min’l onto hit, like they is—leastways not whut it wuz wuth—an’ I won’t sign, an’ yuh ain’t a-goin’ tuh make me. Ye’re a-tryin’ tuh get it away from me fur nuthin’, that’s whut ye’re a-tryin’ tuh do. I won’t sign nuthin’!”
“I had no idee they wuz min’l onto hit when I signed,” whimpered Mrs. Queeder.
“Oh, come, come!” put in Crawford sternly, deciding to deal with this eccentric character and believing that he could overawe him by referring to the secret agreement between them, “don’t forget, Mr. Queeder, that I had a special agreement with you concerning all this.” He was not quite sure now as to what he would have to pay—the two or the eight. “Are you going to keep your bargain with me or not? You want to decide quick now. Which is it?”
“Git out!” shouted Queeder, becoming wildly excited and waving his hands and jumping backward. “Yuh swindled me, that’s whutcha done! Yut thort yuh’d git this place fer nothin’. Well, yuh won’t—yuh kain’t. I won’t sign nuthin’. I won’t sign nuthin’.” His eyes were red and wild from too much brooding.
Now it was that Crawford, who had been hoping to get it all for two thousand, decided to stick to his private agreement to pay eight, only instead of waiting to adjust it with Queeder in private he decided now to use it openly in an attempt to suborn the family to his point of view by showing them how much he really was to have and how unjust Queeder had planned to be to himself and them. In all certainty the family understood it as only two. If he would now let them know how matters stood, perhaps that would make a difference in his favor.
“You call eight thousand for this place swindling, and after you’ve taken eight hundred dollars of my money and kept it for sixty days?”
“Whut’s that?” asked Dode, edging nearer, then turning and glaring at his father and eyeing his mother amazedly. This surpassed in amount and importance anything he had imagined had been secured by them, and of course he assumed that both were lying. “Eight thousan’! I thort yuh said it wuz two!” He looked at his mother for confirmation.
The latter was a picture of genuine surprise. “That’s the fust I hearn uv any eight thousan’,” she replied dumbly,her own veracity in regard to the transaction being in question.
The picture that Queeder made under the circumstances was remarkable. Quite upset by this half-unexpected and yet feared revelation, he was now quite beside himself with rage, fear, the insolvability of the amazing tangle into which he had worked himself. The idea that after he had made an agreement with this man, which was really unfair to himself, he should turn on him in this way was all but mentally upsetting. Besides, the fact that his wife and son now knew how greedy and selfish he had been weakened him to the point of terror.
“Well, that’s what I offered him, just the same,” went on Crawford aggressively and noting the extreme effect, “and that’s what he agreed to take, and that’s what I’m here to pay. I paid him $800 in cash to bind the bargain, and he has the money now somewhere. His saying now that I tried to swindle him is too funny! He asked me not to say anything about it because the land was all his and he wanted to adjust things with you three in his own way.”
“Git outen hyur!” shouted Queeder savagely, going all but mad, “before I kill yuh! I hain’t signed nuthin’! We never said nuthin’ about no $8,000. It wuz $2,000—that’s what it wuz! Ye’re trin’ tuh swindle me, the hull varmint passel o’ yuh! I won’t sign nuthin’!” and he stooped and attempted to seize a stool that stood near the wall.
At this all retreated except Dode, who, having mastered his father in more than one preceding contest, now descended on him and with one push of his arm knocked him down, so weak was he, while the lawyer and prospector, seeing him prone, attempted to interfere in his behalf. What Dode was really thinking was that now was his chance. His father had lied to him. He was naturally afraid of him. Why not force him by sheer brute strength to accept this agreement and take the money? Once it was paid here before him, if he could make his father sign, he could take his share without let or hindrance. Of what dreams mightnot this be the fulfilment? “He agreed on’t, an’ now he’s gotta do it,” he thought; “that’s all.”
“No fighting, now,” called Giles. “We don’t want any fighting—just to settle this thing pleasantly, that’s all.”
After all, Queeder’s second signature ormarkwould be required, peaceably if possible, and besides they wished no physical violence. They were men of business, not of war.
“Yuh say he agreed tuh take $8,000, did he?” queried Dode, the actuality of so huge a sum ready to be paid in cash seeming to him almost unbelievable.
“Yes, that’s right,” replied the prospector.
“Then, by heck, he’s gotta make good on whut he said!” said Dode with a roll of his round head, his arms akimbo, heavily anxious to see the money paid over. “Here you,” he now turned to his father and began—for his prostrate father, having fallen and injured his head, was still lying semi-propped on his elbows, surveying the group with almost non-comprehending eyes, too confused and lunatic to quite realize what was going on or to offer any real resistance. “Whut’s a-gittin’ into yuh, anyhow, Ol’ Spindle Shanks? Git up hyur!” Dode went over and lifted his father to his feet and pushed him toward a chair at the table. “Yuh might ez well sign fer this, now ’at yuh’ve begun it. Whar’s the paper?” he asked of the lawyer. “Yuh just show him whar he orter sign, an’ I guess he’ll do it. But let’s see this hyur money that ye’re a-goin’ tuh pay over fust,” he added, “afore he signs. I wanta see ef it’s orl right.”
The prospector extracted the actual cash from a wallet, having previously calculated that a check would never be accepted, and the lawyer presented the deed to be signed. At the same time Dode took the money and began to count it.
“All he has to do,” observed Giles to the others as he did so, “is to sign this second paper, he and his wife. If you can read,” he said to Dode when the latter had concluded, and seeing how satisfactorily things were going, “you can see for yourself what it is.” Dode now turned and picked it up and looked at it as though it were as simple and clearas daylight. “As you can see,” went on the lawyer, “we agreed to buy this land of him for eight thousand dollars. We have already paid him eight hundred. That leaves seven thousand two hundred still to pay, which you have there,” and he touched the money in Dode’s hands. The latter was so moved by the reality of the cash that he could scarcely speak for joy. Think of it—seven thousand two hundred dollars—and all for this wretched bony land!
“Well, did yuh ever!” exclaimed Mrs. Queeder and Jane in chorus. “Who’d ’a’ thort! Eight thousan’!”
Old Queeder, still stunned and befogged mentally, was yet recovering himself sufficiently to rise from the chair and look strangely about, now that Dode was attempting to make him sign, but his loving son uncompromisingly pushed him back again.
“Never mind, Ol’ Spindle Shanks,” he repeated roughly. “Just yuh stay whar yuh air an’ sign as he asts yuh tuh. Yuh agreed tuh this, an’ yuh might ez well stick tuh it. Ye’re gittin’ so yuh don’t know what yuh want no more,” he jested, now that he realized that for some strange reason he had his father completely under his sway. The latter was quite helplessly dumb. “Yuh agreed tuh this, he says. Did ja? Air yuh clean gone?”
“Lawsy!” put in the excited Mrs. Queeder. “Eight thousan’! An’ him a-walkin’ roun’ hyur all the time sayin’ hit wuz only two an’ never sayin’ nuthin’ else tuh nobody! Who’d ’a’ thort hit! An’ him a-goin’ tuh git hit all ef he could an’ say nuthin’!”