Chapter 16

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_ CHAPTER XVI

From the day of their first meeting, Henry Nelson and Calvin Gray had clashed. No two people could be more different in disposition and temper, hence it was only natural that every characteristic, every action of the one should have aroused the other's antagonism. Nelson was a cool, selfish, calculating plodder with little imagination and less originality; he thought in grooves. His was a splendid type of mind for a banker. He had but one weak point--_viz_., a villainous temper, a capacity for blind, vindictive rage--a weakness, truly, for a man who dealt in money --but a weakness that lent him a certain humanity and without which he would have been altogether too mechanical, too colorless, too efficient. Nature seldom errs by making supermen. A drab man, in many ways, Nelson was extraordinary mainly in this, that his mind followed straight, obvious channels, and that never, except under the urge of extreme passion, did he depart from the strictly logical line of action. In this, of course, he was superior to the average person, who too frequently undertakes the unusual. Calvin Gray's ebullience, his dash, his magnificence of demeanor, could be nothing less than an affront to such a man; Nelson could see in him only a pompous braggart, an empty, arrogant strutter.

Age and easy success had not improved the banker's apoplectic turn of mind, hence Gray's defiant declaration of war, his impudent assurance that the recent misfortunes to the house of Nelson were the direct results of his own deliberate efforts, had proven almost unendurable. In the first place, Nelson could not imagine a man making such a declaration; it was new to his entire experience and contrary to his code. It was unconservative, therefore it staggered him. It was, in fact, a phenomenon so unique as to leave him numb. He told himself that it must have been the act of a madman or a fool. Under no circumstances could he conceive of himself warning an enemy of his intentions; on the contrary, when he undertook to crush a rival he went about it slyly, secretly, in the only regular and proper way. As a matter of fact, it had come as a disagreeable surprise to learn that his former comrade at arms cherished any resentment whatever toward him, for he had thought his tracks were well covered.

What left the banker actually gasping, however, that which he came back to with unfailing astonishment, was Gray's effrontery in coming to Wichita Falls to boast of his accomplishments. That bespoke such contempt, such supreme self-confidence in his ability to wreak further damage, that Nelson wanted to shout aloud his rage and his defiance.

Following the departure of his two callers on that day of the meeting in the bank, Nelson closed his desk and went home. He could work no more. For several days thereafter he was an unpleasant person to do business with.

On mature consideration, what amazed him as much as anything else was the fact that Gray had made good in so short a time and in such a big way. Evidently, however, it was only another story of a lucky break and an overnight fortune--a common occurrence these days. But it was doubly unfortunate under the circumstances, for already Nelson was carrying a load equal to his strength, and he told himself that he could not afford to be distracted, even temporarily, by the irresponsible actions of a maniac. One never could tell what a madman would do. And Gray had confessed himself a madman--a fanatic of the most dangerous type. There was but one course of action open--viz., to eliminate him, destroy him without delay. That was no easy task, even in these lawless times, but the stakes were too high to permit of half measures. There must be a way.

One would have to be careful, of course, not to put oneself too much in the power of unscrupulous people, and, alas! the world was full of unscrupulous people. It was a pity that people could be so unscrupulous as to take advantage of a bargain made in good faith. That was blackmail. However, the prestige of the Nelson name was great, the power of its money was potent, and Henry believed that he could protect himself from eventualities. After cautious deliberation he sent word to one of his men in the Ranger field that he wished to see him.

The man came promptly, and when he left Henry Nelson's house after a conference he carried with him a perfectly clear idea why he had been sent for. This despite the fact that he had not been told in so many words. He knew, for instance, that a certain Calvin Gray had become a menace to his employers, so dangerous that it was worth to them a substantial fortune to be rid of him, and that while Henry Nelson could under no circumstances countenance anything illegal, anything savoring of violence, nevertheless if some accident should befall Gray, if some act of God should put an end to him, there would be no disposition on Henry's part to question the divine origin of that calamity. Furthermore, the speaker had made it plain that if Providence did take a hand in some such mysterious manner, he would then be in a position amply to reward his employee for many acts of loyalty that had apparently passed unrecognized. For instance, profitable deals were forever coming up, new acreage was constantly being acquired, and it would be easy to carry a third party for an interest which was bound to make that third party rich.

All this was expressed with admirable vagueness, but the man understood.

So much accomplished, Nelson went to Dallas and there undertook to learn something about the size of Calvin Gray's profits, who was behind him and the extent of their backing, and what his prospects were. He followed every avenue of information; he even went so far as to hire an investigator and send him north to look up Gray's record and to follow his tracks as far back as possible. Nelson was reconnoitering behind the enemy's lines and testing the strength of his position.

When he returned home Gray was gone, whither he could not learn. As the days passed without further developments, Nelson began to believe that he had had a bad dream and that Gray had merely been talking to hear his own voice. He devoutly hoped that such would prove to be the case.

A time came, however, when his apprehensions were roused afresh, and it was Barbara Parker who rekindled them. She had come to the bank with an excellent proposition and was doing her best to sell it; in the course of her conversation she referred to Gray in a manner that gave Nelson cause for thought.

"I've looked this lease over," "Bob" was saying, "and I've seen the books. It has been producing a hundred and fifty barrels a day steadily. Production like that is cheap at a thousand dollars a barrel. It is worth a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Henry."

"Why is it offered for seventy-five?"

"Bob" shrugged. "How did a 'boll weevil' like this Jackson ever make even a hundred-and-fifty-barrel well, in the first place? Where did he get the money to drill? He is sick of the game, I suppose, and would be satisfied to get his money back with a reasonable profit. It is a find, really."

"Looks so, for a fact. How did you get on to it, 'Bob'?"

"Purely by chance. Through a man named Mallow, a 'scientist' of some sort with a magic tester." The girl laughed.

"Don't know him."

"Mallow is as queer as the rest of his kind, and I put no faith in his story until I investigated. But the well is there and doing a hundred and fifty barrels as regular as clockwork."

"You'll have no trouble in selling it."

"Then you're not interested?"

"Interested? Yes, indeed." Nelson nodded. "I'm quite excited, as a matter of fact, but--I can't handle it at this particular time."

"Frankly, I'm glad you can't," Barbara told him, "for now I can sell it to Mr. Gray."

"Gray?" Henry looked up quickly. "If you wanted it for him, why did you bring it to me?"

"Because Mr. Mallow insisted. He felt sure you'd jump at it. Besides, Mr. Gray is away and prompt action is necessary. I'll wire him at once and ask him to accept my judgment."

"Will he do so?"

The girl colored faintly at the tone of this inquiry. "Perhaps. I think he believes in me, and--that's more than you do. It's mighty flattering to a girl to have a man like Mr. Gray believe in her. Why, I am practically his agent! He buys and sells through me whenever he can."

"He's buying and selling, is he? He said something about entering this field in a big way--"

"He's in." "Bob's" eyes were sparkling. "Oh, things are looking up for dad and me. Mr. Gray is a real miracle man, isn't he?" When this question evoked no response, the girl inquired, curiously, "Tell me, are you and he such good friends as he says you are?"

"Does he say we are good friends?"

"Um-m--well, he speaks admiringly of you, and if people admire me I _love_ them. He thinks you are a remarkably capable person. 'A determined fighter,' I think he called you. That should be high praise, coming from a fellow officer. He probably outlined his plans to you."

"He did." Nelson spoke dryly.

"I assumed that he was relying on your judgment and taking your tips." "Why? How so?"

"Because he has bought so much land alongside of yours."

"Where?"

Barbara was surprised. "I--why, I supposed you knew!" After a moment of hesitation she said: "I think I'd better keep my mouth closed. Just the same, he couldn't have done better than to follow your lead. That is the first compliment I ever paid you, Henry."

"I've paid you enough. And I do believe in you, 'Bob,' but I'm not the flattering kind. He's a great ladies' man. I wonder if he is going to make me jealous."

"You? Jealous? Coming from Wichita's most emotionless banker, from the cold county Croesus, that speech is almost a--a declaration." Miss Parker laughed frankly. "Why, Henry! My haughty little nose is turning up--I can feel it. But, alas! it proves your insincerity. If you had faith in my judgment you'd pick up this snap."

With some hesitation the man said: "We're in deep, 'Bob.' Awfully deep! And things haven't gone as well as they should, lately. It's temporary, of course, but it would require an extraordinary effort at this time to take on anything new. That's the worst of this oil game, it takes so much money to protect your holdings. It doesn't pay to prospect land for the benefit of your neighbor; the risks are too great. Gray has been pretty attentive to you, hasn't he?"

"That's a part of the man; he is attentive to everybody. I have received more candy and flowers and delightful little surprises than in all my short, neglected life."

"I didn't know you liked candy."

"I don't. But I adore getting it. The thought counts. I don't care much for canaries, either--I have such bad luck with them--but he sent me the dearest thing from New York. A tiny mechanical bird with actual feathers. And it sings! It is a really, truly yellow canary in a beautiful gold cage, and when you press a spring it perks its head, opens its beak, flirts its tail, and utters the most angelic song. It must have cost a fortune. Couldn't you _love_ a man who would think of a present like that?"

"Hm-m! Could _you_?"

"Oh, I'm joking, of course," "Bob" said, seriously. "We are merely business associates, Mr. Gray and I, but he has the faculty of taking his personality into his business, and that's why I know he is bound to make a great success."

"Some day," Nelson said, with an effort at lightness, "when we have finished with this infernal oil excitement and the fever has subsided, perhaps I'll have a chance to--well, to play ladies' man. It won't last long--"

"I'm sure it won't," laughed the girl. "You'd never make a go of it, Henry."

"I mean this boom won't last. These fools think it will, but it won't. While it does last, we busy men have no time for anything else, no chance to think of anything, no room in our minds--" The speaker stared gloomily into space. He shook his head. "When a fellow is worried about important matters, he neglects the little; things."

"To me that is the tragedy of this oil excitement. It devours everything fine in us. I wonder if the 'little things' of life aren't, after all, the most important. Mind you, I'm not hinting --I don't want your attentions--I wouldn't have time for them, anyhow, for I'm just as feverish as anybody else. But in the midst of all these new concerns, these sudden millions, this overnight success, our ambitious schemes, we are forgetting the things that really count. Gentleness, courtesy, love, home, children: they're pretty big, Henry. Candy and roses and yellow canaries, too. But "--the speaker rose, briskly--"I didn't come here to talk about them; I came here to sell you an oil well. Sorry you can't take it."

When she had gone Nelson sat in a frowning study for some time. So, it was not all a bad dream. What could be Gray's object in buying acreage adjoining his? Was it faith in his, Nelson's, judgment, a desire to ride to success on the tail of his enemy's kite, or did it mean a war of offsets, drilling operations the instant a well came in? More likely the latter, if the maniac really meant what he had said. That promised to be an expensive and a hazardous undertaking on Gray's part; that was playing the game on a scale too big for the fellow's limited resources, and yet--it might be well to study the maps. Yes, and it was like Gray's effrontery to pay deliberate court to "Bob" Parker, knowing his rival's feelings toward the girl. Another insult! The upstart certainly possessed an uncanny dexterity in pricking armor joints. But what if Gray were in earnest? "Bob" had become a wonderfully desirable creature, she was the most attractive girl in Wichita Falls--

It was a thought that had not previously presented itself to Henry Wilson, and it disturbed him now. He was glad, indeed, that he had sent to Ranger for that field man.

In and around the office of McWade & Stoner these were busy days, what with a couple of new wildcat promotions and a well going down on semiproven ground--that lease which cornered into the Nelson holdings, and to which Stoner had called attention. It had been easy to sell stock in the latter enterprise, and now the deeper went the hole, the higher rose the hopes of the promoters. Stoner himself was directing operations, and he had named the well "Avenger Number One."

To-day he and his partner had been listening to Mallow, who concluded an earnest discourse with these words:

"Nelson and her are pardners in one deal and he's stuck on her. If anybody can put it over, she's the one."

"If he buys that well it'll be the biggest laugh this town ever had," McWade declared.

"Buy it? A hundred and fifty barrels in the heart of settled production for seventy-five thousand? I bet he'll buy it."

"Think the boss will stand for that kind of a deal?"

"Why not? They can't hang it on him, and Heaven knows I'm honest."

"He said 'nothing crooked'--"

Mallow snorted. "Say, I bet you believe in Santa Claus! Gray's a great man, and what makes him great is that he does his own crooked work."

Stoner was inclined to agree with Mallow's measure of their associate. "That's how I got him figgered. His honesty talk didn't go far with me, and I don't believe he'll kick at anything. He's willing to pay any price to break this banker, but you can't bankrupt a feller unless you rip his coin loose; you can't _ask_ him to please loosen. If we make a well of the Avenger we'll force him to shoot maybe a hundred thousand right away, and that may cramp him for a while; but suppose he makes the turn and hits it like we do? We've made him that much stronger, haven't we? Gray plans to keep him spending faster than he can get it in, and that's all right--if it works, but if Mallow can bilk him for seventy-five thousand at one fell swipe--Well, I'll bet my best gold tooth that the boss will stand the shock like a man."

"I think you've both got Gray all wrong," said McWade. "He's too smart to be crooked."

This was a statement so absurd that Mallow proceeded to riddle it. It was, upon its face, a contradiction, for none but smart men could be crooked, and the laws of logic proved the converse to be equally true.

Stoner sat in frowning silence while the argument raged, but he broke in finally: "I've always wanted to pull a real salting job, just to show how easy it is to gyp the cagy ones--not an oil-can job like this, but something big. This looks like the piscological moment."

"Lay off, I tell you!" McWade cried. "We're a legitimate firm,' solid as Gibraltar and safe as a church.' That's our motto, and we've got to live up to it. I came into Wichita on the roof of a Pullman; I'm going out in a drawing-room. Me and sin are strangers." "Nothing sinful about my idea, Mac. One fall or two won't break Nelson; we've got to spill him hard. If we can pick up a few pennies ourselves in the process, why, that's legitimate. The dealer is entitled to his percentage, ain't he? Now listen. Everybody's getting set for a big play over in Arkansas, as you know--salting away cheap acreage and waiting for some of the wildcats to come in. Well, last year I had a tool dresser from up there; nice boy, but he got pneumonia and it turned into the 'con,' so I took him home. He's back on his farm now, coughing his life away and doing a little bootleggin' to keep body and cough together. He's got a big place, but it's all run down and so poor you couldn't raise a dust on it with a bellows. It would be a Christian act to help him sell that goat pasture for enough to go to some nice warm country where he'd get well and they couldn't extradite him."

"Of course, if you've got a scheme that is perfectly safe," McWade ventured, charitably, "and our bit was worth it--"

"I been thinking we might help the boy sell that farm to Nelson."

"How?"

Mallow, too, was curious. "Nelson's lungs are healthy; he wouldn't cough a nickel unless the place had oil on it."

"I meant to tell you it's got oil on it. Best indications I ever saw. There's a drinking well, only the water ain't fit to drink till you skim off the 'rainbow.' Then there's a wonderful seepage into the creek. You can see the oil oozing out from under the bank, in one place. Certainly is pretty."

Stoner's hearers were intent; they exchanged puzzled glances.

Mallow was the first to speak. "Come on. What's the joker? I ain't saying you'd murder the guy for that farm, but if it's as good as that he'd of died of the plague or something, and left it to you long before this."

"In a way, I'm getting ahead of my story," Stoner continued, imperturbably. "The oil ain't actually visible, but it will be if, when, and as, Henry Nelson gets ready to buy it."

"Easy enough to pour oil into a water well, I suppose, but that wouldn't fool a child. As for salting _running_ water, a creek --show me."

"There's a lot for you to learn in this business, Mallow. The point is, can we lay Nelson against a bunch of acreage like that?"

"You could lay _me_ against it if it looks like you say it does," McWade declared.

"This bootlegger, being half dead and non compost mentis, would help put it over with a man like Nelson; he'd set him in a draught while he was signing the option. I'll guarantee the seepage to last for a month, even if he has the well bailed out every day, and the creek will carry oil for half a mile."

"Would your one-lunged friend know how to play in?"

"_Would_ he? It was his idea, and all that kept us off of it last year was the fact that the oil would have to be hauled about thirty miles, and we didn't have the price between us to hire a truck."

For some time the trio discussed the various angles of Stoner's proposition, endeavoring if possible to devise some natural way of intriguing the interest of Henry Nelson. On this score McWade had fewer apprehensions than did his companions, his contention being that it mattered not how the matter was brought to the banker's attention so long as the property would stand investigation. Nelson was bound to be suspicious, anyhow, and a sale depended entirely upon the character of the oil showing. McWade's coolness toward the enterprise, it transpired, was occasioned not by a loftier sense of rectitude than his associates displayed, but by lingering doubts as to the profits involved.

Not until Brick declared that his tubercular friend would accede to any arrangement he saw fit to make did the junior partner fall in with the proposal. "If it's a fair, square deal all around, I'm for it," the latter finally agreed. "But we can't afford to have any guy squawking that we did him up--especially if he's only got one lung to holler with. We're a legitimate firm, and we've got to treat our clients right. I think a fifty-fifty split would be reasonable."

Stoner, too, thought that would be about right, and so it was left.

Mallow was highly enthusiastic. "This will be a great surprise to Gray," he said, with animation. "It's mighty lucky he's got a gang like us to help him." _

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