Darley Champers was in a fever when he came from his conference with Thomas Smith. Smith had played large sums into his hands in the first years of their partnership. Of late the sums had all gone the other way.
But Champers was entangled enough to know that he must raise the money required, and the land was the only a.s.set. Few things are more difficult to accomplish than to find a buyer for what must be sold.
At the office Leigh was waiting for him. "Mr. Champers, I am Leigh Shirley from the Cloverdale place on Gra.s.s River," she said, looking earnestly up at him.
Darley Champers was no ladies" man, but so far as in his coa.r.s.e-grained nature lay, he was never knowingly rude to a woman, and Leigh"s manner and presence made the atmosphere of his office comfortingly different from the place he had just quitted. The white lilac bush in the yard behind the office whose blossoms sent a faint odor through the rear door, seemed to double its fragrance.
"Sit down, madam. I"m pleased to meet you. Can I be of any service to you today?" he said with bluff cordiality.
"Yes, sir. I want to buy the quarter section lying southeast of us. It was the old Cloverdale Ranch once. It belongs to Champers & Co. now, the records show, and I want to get it. It was my Uncle Jim Shirley"s first claim."
Darley Champers stared at the girl and said nothing.
"What do you ask for it?" Leigh inquired.
Still the real estate dealer was silent.
"Isn"t it for sale? It is all weed-grown and hasn"t been cultivated for years."
The tremor in the girl"s voice reached the best spot in Darley Champers"
trade-hardened heart.
"Lord, yes, it"s for sale!" he broke out.
A sense of relief at this sudden opportunity, combined with the intense satisfaction of getting even with Thomas Smith, overwhelmed him. Smith would rave at the sale to a Shirley, yet this sale had been demanded.
Champers had written Smith"s name into too many doc.u.ments to need the owner"s handwriting in this transaction. Smith would leave town in the evening. The whole thing was easy enough. While Leigh waited, the real humaneness of which Champers so often boasted found its voice within him.
"I"ll sell it for sixteen hundred dollars if I can get two hundred down today and the rest in cash inside of two weeks. But I must close the bargain today, you understand."
He had fully meant to make it seventeen hundred fifty dollars. It was the unknown humane thing in him that cut off his own commission.
"It"s worth it," he said to himself. "Won"t Thomas Smith, who"s got no name to sign to a piece of paper, won"t he just cuss when it"s all did!
It"s worth my little loss just to get something dead on him. The tricky thief!"
"I"ll take it," Leigh said, a strange light glowing in her eyes and a firm line settling about her red lips.
Champers couldn"t realize an hour later how it was all done, nor why with such a poor bargain for himself he should feel such satisfaction as he saw Leigh Shirley and Thaine Aydelot driving down the road toward Little Wolf together. Neither could he understand why the perfume of white lilac blossoms from the bush in the back yard of his office should seem so sweet this morning. He was not a flower lover. But he felt the two hundred dollars of good money in his pocket and chuckled as he forecasted the hour of Thomas Smith"s discovery.
"This is a shadier road than the one I came over this morning," Leigh said as she and Thaine followed the old trail toward Little Wolf Creek.
"It"s a little nearer, too, and you"ll see by casting a glimpse westward that things are doing over Gra.s.s River way," Thaine replied.
Leigh saw that a sullen black cloud bank was heaving above the western horizon and felt the heated air of the May afternoon.
"I don"t like storms when I"m away from home," she said.
"Are you afraid, like Jo Bennington? She has the terrors over them. We were out once when she nearly bankrupted everything, she was so scared."
Thaine recalled a stormy night when Jo had clung to his arm to the danger of both of them and the frightened horse he could hardly control.
"No, I"m not afraid. I just don"t like being blown about. I am glad I happened to find you, to be blown about, too, if it"s necessary," Leigh replied.
""Happened" is a good word, Leigh. You happened on what I managed you should, else that long circus performance with Mademoiselle Rosella Gimpkello, famous bareback rider, had not been put on the sawdust this hot day."
"What are you saying, Thaine Aydelot?" Leigh asked.
"You said last night you were coming over here today and that after you had come you might need my advice. Me for the place where my advice is needed ever, on land or water. Rosie"s hand isn"t fit to use yet. I knew that was a nasty gla.s.s cut, so I met her in the hall upstairs early this morning and persuaded her to come over today. It gave me the excuse I wanted--to get here by mere happening."
"And leave Mrs. Aydelot all the cleaning up to do. Humane son!" Leigh exclaimed.
"Oh, Jo stayed all night, and I stopped at Todd Stewart"s place and persuaded him down to help mother and Jo. It wasn"t hard work to get him persuaded, either."
"Aren"t you jealous of Todd?" Leigh asked, with a demure curve of her lip.
"Ought I be? He hasn"t anything I want," Thaine retorted.
"No, he"s a farmer. Some folks don"t like farmers."
"I don"t blame them," Thaine said thoughtlessly. "I haven"t much use for a farm myself. But Leigh, am I an unnecessary evil? I really turned "Rory Rumpus" and "rode a raw-boned racer" clear over here just to be ready to help you. I wish now I"d stayed home and dried the knives and forks and spoons for my mammie."
"Oh, Thaine, you are as good as--as alfalfa hay, and I need you more today than I ever did in my life before."
"And I want to help you more than anything. Don"t be a still cat, Leighlie. Tell me what you are up to."
They had reached the steep hill beyond the Jacobs sheep range where the narrow road with what John Jacobs called "the scary little twist" wound down between high banks to a shadowy hollow leading out to the open trail by the willows along Big Wolf. At the break in the bank, opening a rough way down to the deep waters of Little Wolf, a draught of cool air swept up refreshingly against their faces. Thaine flattened the buggy top under the shade of overhanging trees and held the horse to the spot to enjoy the delightful coolness. They had no such eerie picture to prejudice them against the place as the picture that haunted John Jacobs" mind here.
"I"ve bought a ranch, Thaine; the quarter section that Uncle Jim entered in 1870," Leigh said calmly.
"Alice Leigh Shirley, are you crazy?" Thaine exclaimed.
"No, I"m safe and sane. But that"s why I need your advice," Leigh answered.
Something in the girl"s appealing voice and perfect confidence of friendship, so unlike Jo Bennington"s pouting demands and pretty coquetry, came as a revelation and a sense of loss to Thaine. For he loved Jo. He was sure of that, c.o.c.k-sure.
"It"s this way," Leigh went on, "you know how Uncle Jim lost everything in the boom except his honor. He"s helped everybody who needed help, and everybody likes him, I guess."
"I never knew anybody who didn"t," Thaine agreed.
"So many things, I needn"t name them all, bad crops, bad faith on the part of others, bad luck and bad judgment and bad health, for all his size, have helped till he is ready to go hopeless, and Uncle Jim"s only fifty-one. It"s no time to quit till you"re eighty in such a good old state as Kansas," Leigh a.s.serted. "Only, big as he is, he"s not a real strong man, and crumples down where small nervy men stand up."
"Well, lady landlord, how can I advise you? You are past advising. You have already bought," Thaine said.
"You can tell me how to pay for the ranch," Leigh declared calmly. "I bought of Darley Champers for sixteen hundred dollars. I paid two hundred down just now. I"ve been saving it two years; since I left the high school at Careyville. b.u.t.ter and eggs and chickens and some other things." She hesitated, and a dainty pink tint swept her cheek.
Why should a girl be so deliciously fair with the bloom of summer on her cheeks and with little ringlets curling in baby-gold hair about her temples and at her neck, and with such red lips sweet to kiss, and then put about herself a faint invisible something that should make the young man beside her blush that he would even think of being so rude as to try to kiss her.
"And you paid how much?" Thaine asked gravely.
"Two hundred dollars. I want to borrow fourteen hundred more and get it clear away from Darley Champers. I"m sure with a ranch again, Uncle Jim will be able to win out," Leigh insisted.