Chapter 10

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_ CHAPTER X

"Well, well, Mallow!" The caller's face broke into an engaging smile as he crossed the threshold. "Still wearing dark glasses, eh? I'm afraid you didn't heed my instructions."

Mallow spoke huskily, "What the hell you doing here?"

"Following the excitement, merely. I shall open an office and spend a good deal of my time in Wichita Falls. I hoped I'd find you here, for this morning I heard you describe your invention and--admiration overcame me. I felt constrained to congratulate you upon your scientific attainments. Marvelous, my dear Doctor! Or is it Professor Mallow?" The speaker laughed heartily. "Won't you introduce me to these--let us say magnetic forces of nature that you have discovered?" He indicated the two partners.

"What do you want?" Mallow barked.

"Momentary agitation has robbed our Professor of his habitual politeness--a not unusual phenomenon of the preoccupied scientific mind." These words were directed at McWade and Stoner. "My name is Gray. Perhaps Doctor Mallow has made mention of me."

"So you're the lad that threw pepper in his eyes?" Brick Stoner stared at the newcomer with undisguised interest. He rose, as did McWade. "I'll say we've heard of you. Your name's getting as common as safety-razor blades. You've been cleaning up, haven't you?"

"Um-m, moderately." Calvin Gray shook hands with the promoters, then to the agitated Mallow, who still peered at him apprehensively, he said: "Come, come! Let down your hammer! Uncoil!"

"Listen, you!" the other burst forth. "I beat that thing out. I'm clean and I don't intend to go back. You're a strong guy and you got a bunch of kale, and you're a getter, but the taller they come the harder they fall. You can be had." The speaker was desperate; his face was flushed with anger, the tone of his voice was defiant and threatening.

Gray helped himself to a chair, crossed his legs, and lit a cigar. McWade and Stoner neither moved nor spoke.

"My dear Mallow, you wrong me." In the newcomer's voice there was no longer any mockery. "I gave you credit for more intelligence. We played our little farce and it is done--the episode is closed, so far as I am concerned. I supposed you understood that much. I helped you and I came here to enlist your help."

"You helped _me_?" Mallow showed his teeth in a snarl.

"Precisely. Think a moment. Was it not odd that I failed to appear against you? That the case was never pressed, the prosecution dropped?"

"I s'pose you were afraid to go through. Thought I'd get you."

Gray shook his head impatiently. "Afraid? Of you? Oh, Mallow! Had I feared your majestic wrath, do you think I would have arranged for that doctor to see you every day? And paid his bill? Who, pray, sent in those good things for you to eat?"

There was a pause.

"Did you?"

"I did."

Again there was silence.

"Why?"

"For one thing, I was sorry for you. I really was. I had caused you and Tony a great deal of suffering, and I cannot bring myself to inflict actual suffering upon anyone without doing my best to alleviate it. Then again, I had nothing against you personally. We merely clashed in the course of--business." Mallow allowed himself to sink back upon the desk; he turned his dark goggles upon his friends in a blind stare of bewilderment.

"Well, I'll be damned!" he said, finally.

"Mallow thought _we_ had helped to spring him." It was McWade speaking. "That's why he beat it up here and that's how we happened to put him to work."

"I don't get you yet," the man in glasses muttered. "I can't understand why--"

"What's the odds why he done it?" Stoner inquired, sharply. "Any man that can squirt my eyes full of tobasco, and me with a six gun on him, is all right. And him with a bottle of milk duly made and provided!" The field member of the firm slapped his thigh and laughed loudly. "Then to forget the whole fracas and shake hands on it! That's handsome! Mr. Gray, I'm here to say there's a lot of boys going to lay off you like you was a cactus."

The object of this commendation was pleased. "Gratitude is rare," he murmured. "I thank you. Now then, I was thinking of making friend Mallow a business proposition, but--perhaps I can interest you, also, in doing something for me. I'll pay well."

"We're live ones," Stoner asserted.

"It is business of a confidential nature."

"All the talking we do is on the street. We're promoting wildcats, but I guess we know as much about the good wells as the big companies themselves, and when it comes to actual drilling, I've forgotten more than all these boll weevils will ever learn. What can we do for you?"

"For one thing, I wish to hire the brightest oil scout in the district, but I don't want him, nor anyone else, for the time being, to suspect that he's working for me. I will double his salary to watch one operator. Perhaps he could appear to be in your employ? Furthermore, I intend to do considerable secret buying and selling, and I will need several dummies--moral character unimportant. All I insist upon is absolute loyalty and obedience to my orders."

During the silence that followed, Gray felt the three men staring at him curiously.

"You're after big game, I take it?" McWade inquired, mildly.

"The biggest in these woods."

"One man, did you say?"

"One man."

"Some--grudge, perhaps?"

"Perhaps."

"A yacht is too expensive for most men, but they don't burn money as fast as a grudge."

"This one will take his last dollar--or mine."

"We're a legitimate firm, you know--"

Gray's eyes twinkled as he exclaimed: "Exactly! If I have caused you to infer that I shall employ anything except legitimate means to effect my purpose, it is my error. At the same time, my proposition is not one that I could well afford to take to the ordinary, conservative type of broker. Now then, how about you, Mallow? Would you care to work for me?"

The latter's pale face broke into a grin. "I am working for you," he declared. "I've been on your pay roll now for five minutes. What's more, if it'll save money to croak this certain party and be done with it, why, maybe that can be arranged, too. My new wiggle stick may not find oil every crack, but I bet I can make it point to half a dozen men who--"

Gray lifted an admonitory hand. "Patience! It may come to something like that, but I intend to break him first. Can I arrive at terms with you gentlemen?"

"Write your own ticket," McWade declared, and Mr. Stoner echoed this statement with enthusiasm.

"Very well! Details later. Now, I shall give myself the pleasure of calling upon my man and telling him exactly what I intend doing." The speaker rose and shook hands with the three precious scoundrels. When the door had closed behind him McWade inquired: "Now what do you make of that? Going to serve notice on his bird!"

"Say! He's the hardest guy I ever saw," Stoner declared, admiringly. Mallow spoke last, but he spoke with conviction. "You said it, Brick. I had his number from the start. He's a master crook, and--it'll pay us all to string with him."

Henry Nelson's activities in the oil fields did not leave him much time in which to attend to his duties as vice-president of his father's bank, for what success he and Old Bell Nelson had had since the boom started was the direct result of the younger man's personal attention to their joint operations. That attention was close; their success, already considerable, promised to be enormous.

But of late things had not been going well. The turn had come with the loss of the Evans lease, and that misfortune had been followed by others. Contrary to custom, it was Henry, and not Bell, who had flown into a rage at receipt of Gus Briskow's telegram announcing a slip-up in the deal--a sale to Calvin Gray; that message, in fact, had affected the son in a most peculiar manner. For days thereafter he had been nervous, almost apprehensive, and his nervousness had increased when he secured the back files of the Dallas papers and read those issues which he had missed while out of town. Since that time he had made excuses to avoid trips into the Ranger field and had conducted much of his work over the telephone. Perhaps for that reason it was that trouble with drilling crews had arisen, and that one well had been "jimmed"; perhaps that explained why a deal as good as closed had gotten away, why a certain lease had cost fully double what it should have cost, and why the sale of another tract had not gone through.

Be that as it may, it was this generally unsatisfactory state of affairs that accounted for the junior Nelson's presence in Wichita Falls at this time. He and Bell had spent a stormy forenoon together; he was in an irritable mood when, early in the afternoon, a card was brought into his office.

Nelson could not restrain a start at sight of the name engraved thereon; his impulse was to leap to his feet. But the partition separating him from the bank lobby was of glass, and he knew his every action to be visible. He allowed himself a moment in which to collect his wits, then he opened slightly the desk drawer in which he kept his revolver and gave instructions to admit the caller.

Nelson revolved slowly in his chair; he stared curiously at the newcomer, and his voice was cold, unfriendly, as he said:

"This is quite a surprise, Gray."

"Not wholly unexpected, I hope."

"Entirely! I knew you were in Texas, but I hardly expected you to present yourself here."

Gray seated himself. For a moment the two men eyed each other, the one stony, forbidding, suspicious, the other smiling, suave, apparently frank.

"To what am I indebted for this--_honor?_" Nelson inquired, with a lift of his lip.

"My dear Colonel, would you expect me to come to Wichita Falls without paying my respects to my ranking officer, my immediate superior?"

"Bosh! All that is over, forgotten."

"Forgotten?" The caller's brows arched incredulously. "You are a busy and a successful man; the late war lives in your mind only as a disagreeable memory to be banished as quickly as possible, but --"

Henry Nelson stirred impatiently. "Come! Come! Don't let's waste time."

"--but I retain distinct recollections of our Great Adventure, and always shall."

"That means, I infer, that you refuse to close the chapter?"

As if he had not heard this last remark, Gray continued easily: "It is a selfish motive that brings me here. I come to crow. It is my peculiar weakness that I demand an audience for what I do; I must share my triumphs with some one, else they taste flat, and since you are perhaps the one man in Texas who knows me best, or has the slightest interest in my doings, it is natural that I come to you."

This guileless confession evoked a positive scowl. "What have you done," the banker sneered, "except get your name in the papers?"

"I have made a large amount of money, for one thing, and I am having a glorious time. Now that Evans lease, for instance--"

"Oh! You've come to crow about that."

"Not loudly, but a little. I turned the greater part of that land for as much as five thousand dollars an acre. Odd that we should have come into competition with each other on my very first undertaking, isn't it? Fascinating business, this oil. All one needs, to succeed, is experience and capital."

"What do you know about the business?"

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing. But I am learning. Luck, I find, is a good substitute for experience, and I certainly am lucky. As for capital--of course I was blessed in having unlimited money with which to operate. You inferred as much, I take it. Of course! Yes, Colonel, I have the money touch and everything I have put my hand to has turned out well."

Nelson burst forth in sudden irritation. "What are you getting at? You know I don't care a damn what you're doing, how much money you're making--"

"Strange! Inasmuch as practically every dollar I have made has come out of you, indirectly."

For a moment Nelson said nothing; then, "Just what do you mean by that?"

"Exactly what I said. I've cut under you wherever possible. When you wanted acreage, I bid against you and ran the price up until you paid more than it was worth. That which I secured I managed--"

"_You!_ So--_you're_ the one back of that!" Nelson's amazement destroyed the insecure hold he had thus far maintained upon himself. Furiously he cried: "You're out to get me! That's it, eh?"

"I am, indeed. And half my satisfaction in doing so will be in knowing that you know what I'm up to. One needs steady nerves and a sure touch in any speculative enterprise; he daren't wabble. I'm going to get your nerve, Nelson. I'm going to make you wabble. You're going to think twice and doubt your own hunches, and make mistakes, and I--I shall take advantage of them. Of course I shall do more than merely--"

"Well, by God! I knew you had the gall of the devil, but--See here, Gray, don't you understand what I can do to you? I don't want any trouble with you, but one word from me and--"

"Of course you want no trouble with me; but, alas! my dear Colonel, you are going to have it. Oh, a great deal of trouble. More trouble than you ever had in all your life. Either you are going broke, or I am. You see, I have all the advantage in this little game, for I will pay a dollar for every dollar I can cause you to lose, and that is too high a price for you to meet. If I should go bankrupt, which of course I sha'n't, it would mean nothing to me, while to you--" The speaker shrugged. "You haven't my temperament. No, the advantage is all mine." Gray's tone changed abruptly. "For your own good remove your hand from the neighborhood of that drawer. I am too close to you for a gun-play. Good! Now about that one word from you. You won't speak it, for that would force me to utter nasty truths about you, and you would suffer more than I, this being your home town where you are respected. And the truth is nasty, isn't it?"

Colonel Nelson had grown very white during this long speech. He rose to his feet and laid one shaking hand upon his desk as if to steady himself; his tongue was thick in his mouth as he said, hoarsely:

"I'd like to think you are crazy, but--you're not."

"Almost a compliment, coming from you!"

"You think you can beat me--Want to make it a money fight, do you? Well, I'll give you a bellyful. Every dollar I've got will go to smash you--smash you!"

"Splendid!" Gray was on his feet now and he was smiling icily. "One or the other of us will be ruined, and then perhaps we can resort to those methods which both of us would enjoy using. Of the two, I believe I am the more primitive, for the mere act of killing does not satisfy me. I've come a long way to sink my teeth into you. Now that they're in, they'll stay. So long as you're willing to fight clean, I'll--"

"Are you gentlemen going to talk forever?" The inquiry came in a woman's voice. Both Nelson and Gray turned to behold a smiling, animated face framed in a crack of the door.

"Miss Good!" Calvin Gray strode forward, took the girl's hands in his and drew her over the threshold. "My dear Miss Good, I have rummaged half the state, looking for you."

"I hope I'm not interrupting.--I recognized you and--" The girl turned her eyes to Henry Nelson, but at sight of his face her smile vanished. "Oh, I'm sorry!" she cried. "Let me run out--"

Gray held her hands more firmly. "Never. Do you think I shall risk losing you again? Colonel Nelson and I had finished our chat and were merely exchanging pleasantries."

"Cross your heart?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die." Gray laughed joyously and again shook the girl's hands.

"Yes. Colonel Gray was just leaving," Nelson managed to say.

"Colonel? Are you a colonel, too?" the girl inquired, and Gray bowed.

"I was."

"And you knew each other abroad?"

"We came to know each other very well. We were, in fact, commissioned at the same time and place, but Colonel Nelson received his a moment earlier than I received mine, therefore he outranked me. Now then, permit me to retire while you and he--"

"Oh, there's nothing confidential about what I have to say. It's good news for my partner, and I'm sure he'd love to share it." To Nelson she announced, "Pete has a showing of oil!"

The vice-president of the bank murmured something which was lost in Gray's quick inquiry: "Partner? Are you a partner of Colonel Nelson's?"

"After a fashion. We own a twenty-acre lease west of 'Burk'--that is, I have a quarter interest and Henry is putting down a well. I drove out there, and his driller told me it is looking good."

Gray turned a keenly inquisitive gaze upon his enemy, and what he saw, or fancied he saw, gave him the thrill of a new discovery. It may have been no more than intuition on his part, but something convinced him that his acquaintance with Miss Good deeply displeased the man. If he knew Henry Nelson as well as he believed he did, it was more than disapproval, more than mere personal dislike, that smoldered in the latter's eyes. This was luck!

In his warmest tone he cried: "Congratulations, my dear Colonel. However badly you have fared in the Ranger district, fortune favors you here. But why only a quarter interest? You put too low a price upon your blessings. I'll better that arrangement. Why, I was ready to offer Miss Good a full half of all I have, when she played a heartless jest upon me. Ran away! Disappeared! I'll admit I was piqued. I was deeply resentful, but--"

Nelson interrupted this flow of extravagance. "'Miss Good'?" he said, curiously. "Why does he call you that, 'Bob'?"

"A secret! A little game of pretense," Gray declared, nastily. "For the sake of our friendship, Colonel, don't tell me her real name and rob me of the pleasure of hearing it from her own lips. Come, Miss Good! Enough of money making and oil wells and stupid business affairs. I am going to bear you away upon my arm, even at the risk of displeasing my superior officer. Ha! Lucky the war is over. Now then, your promise."

Gray's impetuosity, his buoyancy, robbed his speech of boldness, nevertheless Barbara Parker flushed faintly. She was ill at ease; she felt sure she had erred in interrupting these two men; she was glad of an excuse to leave.

Gray lingered a moment, long enougn for his eyes to meet those of the banker. In his there was a light of triumph, of mockery, as he said:

"A pleasant interview, wasn't it, Colonel? And now we understand each other perfectly. A fair fight and no quarter asked."

Henry Nelson stood motionless as he watched his two callers leave the bank together, then slowly he clenched his muscular hands, and from his lips there issued an oath better left unwritten. _

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