Part 21

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 nothing of 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 the stranger, 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 not to 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 the deal 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 to witness 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 a little. 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, his greed 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 latter replied, “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.”