There followed a moment of silence. Mallow and Stoner exchanged glances. "What percentage of that goes?" the former finally inquired.
"One hundred."
"So? Then it"s lucky Nelson didn"t fall. But there"s no harm done--n.o.body"s hurt."
"It is lucky, indeed-for me. I"d have felt bound to make good his loss, if you had hooked him. I presume I ought to expose this swindle."
"Expose Jackson?" Stoner inquired, quickly. When Gray nodded, there was another brief silence before the speaker ventured to say: "I know this bird Nelson, and, take it from me, you"re giving him the best of it. If I hadn"t known him as well as I do, I wouldn"t of put in with you to break him. It"s all right to trim a sucker once; it"s like letting the blood of a sick man--he"s better for it. But to ride a square guy to death, to keep his veins open--well, I ain"t in that kind of business.
Now about this Jackson; you can land him, I s"pose, if you try, but it would be lower than a frog"s foot, after him playing square with you."
"What do you mean by that?"
"He could have stung you, easy, couldn"t he? You surged out here on purpose to buy the lease, but he hid out all afternoon to avoid you."
"He is a thief. He is stealing hundreds of dollars a day."
"Sure! From the Atlantic, that has stolen hundreds of thousands from the likes of him--yes, millions. It was the Atlantic that broke the market to sixty-five cents, filled their storage tanks and contracted a million barrels more than they had tankage for, then gypped the price to three dollars. I can"t shed any tears over that outfit."
"Let"s not argue the ethics of big business. The law of supply and demand--"
"Supply and demand, eh? Ever strike you as queer that crude never breaks as long as the big companies have got their tanks full? The price always toboggans when they"re empty, and comes back when they"re filled up. That"s supply and demand with the reverse English, ain"t it?
Say, the Atlantic and those others play with us outsiders like we was mice. When their bellies get empty they eat as many of us as they want, then they let the rest of us scurry around and hunt up new fields. We run all the risks; we spend our coin, and when we strike a new pool they burgle us over again." Stoner was speaking with a good deal of heat. "Big business, eh? Well, here"s some little business--dam"
little. The Atlantic leased a lot of scattered acreage I know about and drilled it. Pulled off their crews at the top of the sand and drilled in with men they could trust. It turned out good, but they capped their wells, wrecked their rigs, and, of course, that condemned the whole territory. Then they set about buying it all in, cheap--through dummies. Double-crossed the farmers, see? Friend of mine took a chance; put down a well on his own. The usual thing happened; they broke him.
It took a lot of doing, but they broke him. One little trick they did was to c.o.c.k a bit and drop it in the hole. That prank cost him sixteen thousand dollars before he could "side track" the tool. He quit, finally, less "n a hundred feet from big pay. Then, having bought up solid for near nothing they came back and started business, laughing merrily. That"s the Atlantic."
"A splendid lecture on commercial honesty. I am inspired by it, and I reverence your scruples, but--I grope for the moral of the story."
"The moral is, mind your own business and--and give a guy a chance."
"Um-m! Suppose we leave it at that for the present."
Mallow, who had remained silent during his friend"s argument, greeted this suggestion with relief. He was glad to change the subject. "Good!"
he cried, heartily. "I"d about as soon face Old Tom Parker, like that fellow in the restaurant did, as to face Jackson. He"d sink a stillson in my head, sure, if--"
"Parker? Was that old man Miss Parker"s father?"
"Certainly! What d"you think ailed that gunman? D"you think he got the flu or something, all of a sudden? There ain"t anybody left tough enough to hanker for Tom"s scalp. He"s pinned a rose on all of those old-timers, and he"s deadly poison to the new crop."
For the first time Calvin Gray understood clearly the reason for the unexpected outcome of that encounter in the cafe. No wonder the stranger"s trigger finger had been paralyzed. Barbara"s father, indeed!
How stupid of him not to guess. On the heels of his first surprise came another thought; suppose that old Paladin should consider that he, Gray, had shown weakness in allowing another to a.s.sume the burden of his quarrel? And suppose he should tell his daughter about it! That would be a situation, indeed.
"I must find him, quickly," Gray declared. "Perhaps he"ll ride back to town with us."
It was not a difficult task to locate the veteran officer, and Tom was delighted at the chance to ride home with his new acquaintance.
That journey back to civilization was doubly pleasant, for Mr. Parker cherished no such feelings as Gray had feared, and, moreover, he responded quickly to the younger man"s efforts to engage his liking.
They got along famously from the start, and Tom positively blossomed under the attentions he received. It had been a trying day for him, but his ill humor quickly disappeared in the warmth of a new-found friendship, and he talked more than was his custom. He was even led to speak of old days, old combats, of which the bloodless encounter that evening was but a tame reminder. The pictures he conjured up were colorful.
A unique and an engaging person he proved to be; an odd compound of gentleness and acerbity, of kindliness and rancor; a quiet, guileless, stubborn, violent old man-at-arms, who would not be interrupted while he was eating. He was both scornful and contemptuous of evildoers. All needed killing.
"Hard luck, I call it, for a budding desperado to wreck a career of promise the way that wretched fellow did," Gray told him with a laugh.
"Out of all the men in Texas, to pick you--"
"Oh, he ain"t a bud! He"s quite a killer."
"Indeed?"
"He kills Mexicans and n.i.g.g.e.rs and folks without guns, mostly. Low-down stuff! He"s got three or four, I believe. I never could see why the Nelsons kep" him."
There was a brief silence. "I beg pardon?" said Gray.
"He"s been on the Nelson pay roll for years--doing odd jobs that wasn"t fit to be done. But I guess they got tired of him, anyhow he"s been hanging around Wichita for the last two or three weeks. He"s been in an out of our office quite a bit."
"Your office? What for?"
"I dunno, unless he took a shine to "Bob.""
"Not--really?"
Mr. Parker uttered an unpleasant sound. "She never said anything about it, but I suspicioned she had to order him out, finally. I"d of split his third shirt b.u.t.ton if he"d stood his ground. He knew I had something on him, but he couldn"t figure just what it was." Old Tom"s teeth shone through the gloom. "A man will "most always act like that when he don"t know just where he"s at. I knew where _I_ was at, all the time, only I wanted to see that b.u.t.ton plain. I allus know where _I"m_ at."
Later, when the journey was over and Tom Parker had been dropped at his gate, Gray spoke to his two companions.
"Did you hear what he said?"
"We did."
"Do you believe I was framed?"
Both Mallow and Stoner nodded. "Don"t you?" the former inquired. When no answer was forthcoming, he said: "Better give us the flag, Governor.
We"re rar"ing to go."
"You mean--?"
"You know what I mean. Nelson"s so crooked his bedclothes fall off. We pulled a b.o.n.e.r this time, but Brick has got another window dressed for him."
"I"ll think it over," said Gray.
CHAPTER XX
Ozark Briskow, like his sister Allegheny, was studying hard and learning rapidly, but he had adopted an educational plan, a curriculum, so to speak, far different from hers. Whereas she lived between book covers and the thousand and one details of her daily existence were governed by a bewildering army of "don"ts," Buddy had devised his own peculiar system of acquiring wisdom, and from it the word "don"t" had been deliberately dropped. His excursion into the halls of learning, brief as it had been, had convinced him that books could teach him only words, whereas he craved experiences, ideas, adventures. Adventure comes at night; pleasure walks by gaslight. Young Briskow told himself that he had missed a lot of late hours and would have to work diligently to catch up, but he undertook the effort with commendable courage.
It is said that all wish to possess knowledge, but few are willing to pay the price. Buddy was one of the minority. Early he adopted the motto, "Money no object," and it provoked him not at all to learn that there is a scale of night prices considerably higher than the scale of day prices; to find, for instance, that a nocturnal highball costs twice as much as one purchased during daylight hours. That phenomenon, by the way, had nothing to do with the provisions of the Eighteenth Amendment, it merely explained why farmers went to bed early--they couldn"t afford to sit up, so Buddy decided.
He had learned a lot since leaving school, not only about prohibition, but also about speed laws, men"s fashions, facial ma.s.sage, the fox trot and the shimmy, caviar, silk pajamas, bromo-seltzer, the language of flowers, and many of the pleasures and displeasures of the higher intellectual life, such as love and insomnia.