Chapter 23

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_ CHAPTER XXIII

In a long, relentless struggle between two men psychology may play a part as important as in a campaign between two opposing armies, or so at least Calvin Gray believed. That, in fact, was one of his pet theories and from the first he had planned to test it. It was characteristic of Henry Nelson, on the other hand, that he put no faith whatever in "imponderables," hence Gray's reference to morale, on that day of their first meeting, had amused him. Morale, indeed! As if a man of his tough fiber could be affected by the mere chanting of a Hymn of Hate! He considered himself the captain of his soul, and the antics of a malicious enemy, the wild waving of false danger signals, instead of distracting a resolute mariner, would merely cause him to steer a truer course.

But Nelson was a brooder. Time came when doubts distressed him, when he began to put faith in "malicious animal magnetism" and, despite his better sense, to wonder if some evil spell really had not been put upon him.

In his arrogance it had seemed at first a simple matter to do away with Gray. That had been mistake number one. The miserable breakdown of that plan, the refusal of his hireling to go forward, and the impossibility of securing a trustworthy substitute convinced him finally that he had erred grievously in his method. Some men are invulnerable to open attack, and Gray, it seemed, had been wet in the waters of the Styx. No, that had been a bad beginning and Nelson regretted it, for he feared it had served as a warning.

So, indeed, it appeared, for not long thereafter he actually felt, or thought he felt, the vengeful claws of his enemy. A new strike in one of the western counties had become public, and a brand-new oil excitement was born overnight. Trains were crowded, roads were jammed with racing automobiles; in the neighborhood of the new well ensued scenes to duplicate those of other pools. For the first week or two there was a frenzy of buying and selling, a speculation in oil acreage and town lots.

The Nelsons, of course, were early on the ground, for in spite of the father's contention that they could ill afford, at the moment, to tie up more money in unproductive properties, the son had argued that they must have "protection," and his arguments had prevailed.

Henry went in person, and he was disagreeably surprised to discover Gray on the ground ahead of him. The latter bore evidences of hard usage in the shape of a black eye and numerous bandages, reputed to be the result of an automobile collision. Henry regretted that his enemy's injuries were so trivial. It was indeed a pity that so few accidents are fatal.

He bought rapidly, right and left, as much to forestall Gray as anything else, and he was back at the bank shortly with a number of leases. Not until some time later did he learn that he had paid a price for them twice as high as that charged for properties closer in.

It was Bell who brought this unwelcome information home to him --brought it home in his characteristic manner.

"What the hell ails you, anyhow?" the father inquired, in apoplectic wrath. "Have you gone clean crazy?"

After some inquiry Henry realized what ailed him and who had caused him to throw away his money, but he did not apprise Bell. More than once they had been parties to "wash sales," and had helped to establish artificial values, but to be victimized in the same manner was like the taste of poison.

Of course, it meant little in the big game. At most, the firm had been "gypped" only a comparatively few thousand dollars, and the loss could probably be recouped by a resale; nevertheless, the incident was significant, and, upon second thought, it appeared to shed light upon certain other expensive transactions in other fields.

Now, oddly enough, this new oil discovery did not develop as had been expected--in fact, the excitement died out quickly--and when Henry Nelson undertook to dispose of his holdings he was faced by a heavy loss, for Gray was offering adjoining acreage at low prices.

Following this unhappy experience, the scandal about the Jackson well became public--the Atlantic Company having at last located the leak in its pipe line--and the whole Red River district enjoyed a great laugh. Henry Nelson did not laugh. He turned green when he realized how close he had come to buying that lease. Of course, here was a swindle that Gray could have had nothing to do with, and yet--Nelson wondered why "Bob" Parker had failed to sell it to him. "Bob" had tied it upon an option, awaiting his return, and he had hurried back on purpose to examine it. Why hadn't he bought it? Henry asked that question of the girl, and, when she told him as much as she knew, he began to believe that the whole thing was, indeed, an incredibly bold attempt to swindle him, and him alone.

Miss Parker, of course, was deeply chagrined at her connection with the fraud; nevertheless, the banker felt his flesh turn cold at the narrowness of his escape. He assured himself, upon calmer thought, that his imagination was running away with him; this was too devilishly ingenious, too crooked! And besides, Gray had promised to fight fair. All the same, the thing had a suspicious odor, and Nelson slept badly for a few nights. He decided to use extra caution thereafter and see that he neither paid more for leases than they were worth nor permitted anybody to "salt" him. Salting, after all, was rare; one read about it in books, but no experienced operator had ever been fooled in that way.

About this time a big gasser blew in north of the Louisiana fields, and wise oil men began to talk about Arkansas and quietly to gather in acreage. Less than a week later one of Nelson's field men brought into the bank a youth who owned some property in the latter state. This yokel was a sick man; he was thin and white; he had a racking cough, and he knew nothing about oil except from hearsay. All he knew was that he would die if he didn't get to a warmer, drier climate; but the story he told caused Henry Nelson to stare queerly at his field man. That very night the latter left town.

On the third night thereafter, in answer to a telegram, Nelson and the Arkansas farmer slipped unobtrusively out of Wichita Falls. It so happened that Brick Stoner, en route to Hot Springs for a little rest, was a passenger on the same train.

Stoner returned in due time, much rested, and he brought with him a large check to the firm's account.

"We timed it to the minute," he told McWade and Mallow. "That gasser couldn't have come in better if we'd ordered it. Nelson's dickering under cover for more acreage near what he's got, but I tipped off who he was."

"He fell easy, eh?"

Stoner grinned. "He was so pleased with himself at swindling an invalid, and so scared somebody would discover those seepages that he couldn't hardly wait to sign up. If it hadn't of been for the general excitement, he might of insisted on time to do some exploring, but he's pulled a rig off another job and he's sending it right up."

"We've got some good news, too," McWade asserted. "Avenger Number One is trying hard to come in."

"No?"

"I tell you Gray's got a rabbit foot. If we continue to trail along with him, I'll be losing you as a partner, Brick."

"How so?"

"Why, I'll be turning honest. It seems to pay."

"Um-m. Probably I'd better keep all this Nelson money and leave you--"

"Oh, not at all," the junior partner said, quickly. "That isn't an oil deal, strictly speaking, for you say there ain't oil enough on the land to grease a jackknife. I look on it as a real-estate speculation."

With a laugh Stoner accepted this explanation, and then announced that he was hungry for his breakfast.

This time Mallow spoke up. "I'm bally-hooing for a new joint; Fulton's Fancy Waffle Foundry. Follow me and I'll try to wedge you in. But you'll have to eat fast and pick your teeth on the sidewalk, for we need the room." In answer to Stoner's stare, the speaker explained his interest in the welfare of Wichita Falls's newest eating place, and en route thereto he told how Margie Fulton came to be running it. "Gray did it. He got the Parker girl to help us, and we had the place all fixed up by the time Margie got here. She's tickled pink, and it'll coin money--if it isn't pinched."

"Pinched?"

"Sure! Bennie's the cashier, and he palms everything from dimes to dishtowels. Force of habit! Better count your change till I break him of short-changing the customers."

"_You_--" Stoner stopped in his tracks.

"Oh, I'm giving him lessons in elemental honesty."

"My God! Are you turning honest, too?" the other man exclaimed. "Seems like that's all I hear lately."

It was a blue day for Henry Nelson when Avenger Number One came in, for it made necessary immediate drilling operations on his part. And the worst of it was the well was not big enough to establish a high value for his holdings. It was just enough of a producer to force him to begin three offsets and that, for the moment, was an undertaking decidedly inconvenient.

Bell Nelson was even more dismayed at the prospect than was his son, for upon him fell the necessity of raising the money. "Hell of a note," the old fellow grumbled, "when a wet well puts a crimp in us! A little more good luck like this and we'll go broke." "We can't afford to let go, or to sub-lease--"

"Of course not, after the stand we've taken. There's talk on the street about the bank, now, and--I'd give a good deal to know where it comes from." The junior Nelson had heard similar echoes, but he held his tongue. "I never did like your way of doing business," the speaker resumed, fretfully. "We've overreached. You wanted it all and--this is the result."

Now Henry Nelson was warranted in resenting this accusation, for it had ever been Bell's way to pursue a grasping policy, therefore he cried, angrily:

"That's right; pass the buck. You know you wouldn't listen to anything else. If we're in deep, you're more to blame than I."

"Nothing of the sort." Old Bell began a profane denial, but the younger man broke in, irritably:

"I've never won an argument with you, so have it your own way. But while you're raising money for the Avenger offsets, you'd better raise plenty, for Gray is going to punch holes down as fast as ever he can."

"Who is this Gray? What's he got against you?"

Henry's eyes shifted. "Has he got anything against me? He bought a good lease and was wise enough to get somebody to make a well for him--"

"Those crooks! Those wildcatters!"

"Now, he proposes to develop his acreage as rapidly as possible. Nothing strange about that, is there?"

"Is he sore at you?"

"We didn't get along very well in France."

"Humph! I suppose that means you fought like hell. And now he's getting even. By the way, where am I going to get this money?"

"That is up to you," said Henry, with a disagreeable grin, whereupon his father stamped into his own office in a fine fury.

Not long after this father and son quarreled again, for of a sudden a perfect avalanche of lawsuits was released, the mysterious origin and purpose of which completely mystified Old Bell. The Nelsons, like everybody else, had unsuccessfully dabbled in oil stocks and drilling companies for some time before the boom started, also during its early stages, and most of those failures had been forgotten. They were painfully brought to mind, however, when Henry was served with a dozen or more citations, and when inquiry elicited the reluctant admission from the bank's attorney that a genuine liability existed--a liability which included the entire debts of those defunct joint-stock associations in which he and his father had invested. This was enough to enrage a saint.

Henry argued that he had invariably signed those articles of association with the words, in parentheses, "No personal liability," and he was genuinely amazed to learn that this precaution had been useless. He protested that scores--nay, hundreds--of other people were in the same fix as he, and that if this outrageous provision of the law were strictly enforced and judgments rendered widespread ruin would result. His lawyer agreed to this in all sympathy, but read aloud the provisions of the statute, and Nelson derived no comfort from the reading. The lawyer was curious to know, by the way, who had taken the trouble to acquire all of these claims--a task of heroic size--but about all the encouragement he could offer was the probability of a long and expensive series of legal battles, the outcome of which was problematical. That meant annoyance, at best, and a possible impairment of credit, and the Nelson credit right now was a precious thing, as Henry well knew. Eloquently he cursed the day he had met Calvin Gray. What next, he wondered.

He discovered what next when the driller he had sent up to Arkansas in charge of his rig one day came into the office in great agitation. The man's story caused his employer's face to whiten.

"_Salted!_ I--don't believe it." Nelson seized his head in his hands. "Oh, my God!" he gasped. Misfortunes were coming with a swiftness incredible. Salted! Victimized, like the greenest tenderfoot! A small fortune sunk while the whole country was still chuckling over the Jackson scandal! This _was_ a nightmare.

Henry was glad that his father was in Tulsa in conference with some other bankers over that Avenger offset money, otherwise there was no telling to what extreme the old man's rage would have carried him at this final calamity. And that whining, coughing crook, that bogus farmer, was in Arizona--or elsewhere--out of reach of the law! The younger Nelson turned desperately sick. If this was not more of Gray's work, it was the direct result of the curse he had called down.

"Does anybody know?" Henry inquired, after he had somewhat recovered his equilibrium.

"Nobody but us fellows."

"You--you mustn't shut down. You've got to keep up the bluff until--until I get time to turn."

"You going to bump off that land to somebody else?"

"What do you think I'm going to do?" Nelson was on his feet now and pacing his office with jerky strides. "Take a loss like that?" He paused and glared at the bearer of bad tidings, then growled: "What are you grinning about? Oh, you needn't say it. You want yours, eh? Is that it?"

"Well--it's worth something to turn a trick like this."

"How much?"

"It's a big deal. It'll take something substantial--something substantial and paid in advance--to make our boys forget all the interesting sights they've seen. But I'd rather leave the amount to you, Henry. You know me; I wouldn't be a party to a crooked deal, not for anything, except to help you out--"

"How much?" the banker repeated, hoarsely.

But the field man merely smiled and shrugged, so, with a grunt of understanding, Henry seated himself and wrote out a check to bearer, the amount of which caused him to grind his teeth.

Now it was impossible to dispose of a large holding like that Arkansas tract at a moment's notice. In order to evade suspicion, it was necessary to go about it slowly, tactfully, hence the financier moved with as much circumspection as possible. His careful plans exploded, however, when he met Calvin Gray a day or so later.

Gray had made it an invariable practice to speak affably to his enemy in passing, mainly because it so angered the latter; this time he insisted upon stopping. He was debonair and smiling, as always, but there was more than a trace of mockery in his tone as he said:

"So your luck has changed, hasn't it? That Avenger well of mine has put a good value on your property. I congratulate you, Colonel."

"Humph! I don't believe in luck," Nelson mumbled. "And the Avenger isn't enough of a well to brag about."

"So? You don't believe in luck? It seems to be our lot invariably to differ, doesn't it? Now, my dear Colonel, I'm not ashamed to confess that I am deeply superstitious, and that I believe implicitly in signs and prodigies. You see, I was born under a happy star; 'at my nativity the front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,' as it were. Comfortable feeling, I assure you. Take that incident at New-town, not long ago; doesn't that prove my contention?"

"What incident?"

Gray's brows lifted whimsically. "Of course. How should you know? There was a clumsy attempt to do me bodily harm, to--assassinate me. Funny, isn't it? So ill considered and so impracticable.--But about this Avenger matter, if you find it inconvenient to offset my wells as fast as I put them down, perhaps you'd consider selling--"

"_Inconvenient?_" Nelson felt the blood rush to his face at this insufferable insult, but he calmed himself with the thought that his opponent was deliberately goading him. After all, it served him right for permitting the fellow to stop him. "Inconvenient! Ha!" He turned away carelessly.

"No offense, my dear Colonel. I thought, after your Arkansas fiasco, you might wish--"

"What Arkansas fiasco?" Nelson wheeled, and in spite of himself his voice cracked.

"Ah! Another secret, eh?" Gray winked elaborately--nothing could have been more deliberately offensive than that counterfeit of a friendly understanding. "Very well, I sha'n't say a word."

"You--" The banker was gasping. "You're doing your damnedest to --to start something, aren't you?"

"Every day. Every hour. Every minute." The speaker bowed. "In defense of my promise to fight fair, let me assure you, however, that I did not start this. As a matter of fact, I knew nothing about it until you had been hooked. Apropos of that quixotic promise, please remember that your own actions have absolved me from it."

The men stared at each other for a moment that seemed interminable. Gray was watchful, expectant; Nelson was plainly shaken by a desire so desperate that resistance left him weak. He was like an animal frozen in the very attitude of springing.

"Foxy, aren't you?" he managed to say, at last. "Tempting me to --make the first move." With a mighty effort of will he forced his tense body to relax. "The act of a bully! Bah! Wouldn't I be a fool--"

"A bully is usually a coward," Gray said, slowly. "Neither of us is a coward. I'm not ready to--join the issue that way, especially in a place like this. The game is too exciting to--"

"You'll get all the excitement you're looking for," Nelson cried, wrathfully. "You've cost me a lot of money, but you could have cost me a lot more if you hadn't been fool enough to brag about it and give me warning. Now--I'll send you out of Texas afoot."

"On my back, perhaps, but never on my feet."

Without another word the banker passed on, but he went blindly, for his mind was in black chaos. No chance now for secrecy; he was in for a bit of hell. He managed to kill the story in the local papers, but it appeared in the Dallas journals, which was even worse, and for the first time in his life he found himself an object of ridicule. The Arkansas transaction was made to appear the most outrageous swindle of recent oil history, and, coming so quickly after the Jackson exposure, it excited double interest and amusement.

In truth, the facts about the salting of that Arkansas tract did make a story, for the methods employed had been both new and ingenious. Nelson had been fooled by a showing of oil in an ordinary farm well, and by a generous seepage into a running stream some distance away. Not until a considerable sum had been spent in actual drilling operations, however, did those seepages diminish sufficiently to excite suspicion sufficiently, in fact, to induce the crew to pump the water well dry. This done, an amazing fraud had been discovered. It had been found that the vendor of the land had removed the rock curbing and behind it had packed a liberal quantity of petroleum-soaked cotton waste. Naturally, when the well had been walled up again and permitted to resume its natural level, the result was all that the unscrupulous owner could have expected.

The creek seepage had turned out to be equally counterfeit, but even more ingeniously contrived. It had manifested itself where a stratum of clean white sand, underlaid with clay, outcropped at the foot of a high bank. In the undergrowth, quite a way back from the stream, tardy investigation disclosed that a hole had been dug down to that layer of sand and into the hole had been poured several barrels of "crude." The earth from the digging had been removed and the hole had been cunningly covered up. Naturally, the oil from this reservoir had followed the sand stratum and--the resultant phenomenon at the water's edge had been well calculated to excite even the coldest-blooded observer. It had excited Henry Nelson to such an extent that he had bought not only this farm, but a lot of other farms. And Nelson was shrewd. Oh, it was a great joke! The whole mid-continent field rocked with laughter at it.

Nelson, senior, returned from Tulsa bull-mad, and he came without the money he had expected to get. What went on in his office that morning after he sent for his son none of the bank's employees ever knew, but they could guess, for the rumblings of the old man's rage penetrated even the mahogany-paneled walls. _

Read next: Chapter 24

Read previous: Chapter 22

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