The Bad Man Part 16

Pell smiled. "That's my specialty!"

Indignation was in every fiber of Hardy's gaunt frame. He was losing his temper, and he was wise enough to know that that would never do. The unforgivable sin was to lose control of oneself. He must hold on to his voice, his movements; but a nest of hornets, under attack, could not have been angrier. "I protest!" he said, as calmly as he could. "Here I been settin' around waitin' for this place for five years! You can't come here an' take it away from me like this! No, sir, I won't have it!"

"Look here," Gilbert stepped in and said. "You're getting your money! What are you boiling about?"

"Red" had been listening attentively. He came close to Gilbert now, and said, "He wants the place. Didn't he just say so?"

"The place?" Gilbert repeated. "What the devil does he want the place for?"

Pell was growing impatient. There was too much quibbling. "We're losing time. Come on, let's get things settled."

Jones, however, was not to be hurried. "But I want to know why he wants this place so much." His suspicions were thoroughly aroused.

No one had observed Uncle Henry, who had silently wheeled his chair about until he got to the table, where Pell had left his satchel long ago. Like a curious old woman he now picked it up, brazenly opened it, and exclaimed:

"Hey! What the Sam Hill!" and backed away; but not until he had dipped his hands into the bag.

"What's the matter?" Gilbert asked, turning.

"It's full o' dirt! Just dirt!" Uncle Henry cried, and glanced about to see the effect of his surprising information.

"Dirt?" Gilbert said, not understanding.

"Yes, look!" And the old man pointed to the bag.

"But whose bag is it?" Gilbert persisted.

Uncle Henry lifted a thin finger and directed it to Pell. "His'n!" he said.

But Gilbert was still in a daze.

"But what in the world could anybody be taking specimens of the soil around here for?" he inquired, and then began to think.

"Just to show the character of the ground, to see what will grow best,"

Pell hastened to explain.

"But it won't grow nothin'--not even rocks, an' you know it," the occupant of the wheel chair said. Then a new thought came to him, and he shot out, "By golly, I got it! He's an oil man, ain't he?"

Pell, furious, cried, "Oh, shut up! You old busybody!"

"He wants to buy this ranch because there's oil here!" Uncle Henry went on, not dismayed in the least at the other's insult.

"Bah!" Pell scornfully e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

Gilbert's face was a study. His eyes went from one to another in the room.

"Oil?" he said. "Oil?"

"Yes, an' that's why _he_ wants it, too!" cried Uncle Henry, pointing to Hardy this time, "The big skin!"

Pell took up the satchel--the little bag that had caused such a big sensation--and walked over to Uncle Henry's chair.

"Why, you poor old dotard, there's no oil in these specimens. You can smell 'em yourself if you want to," he said. But there was something in his manner of the lady who doth protest too much.

"No, I can't," Uncle Henry was swift to deny. "My smeller's no good." He sniffed comically--as if that proved his point.

"Let _him_ examine them, then," suggested Pell, holding the satchel out to Gilbert, who stood on the other side of the table.

But Gilbert said nothing. It was Uncle Henry who again blurted out:

"That don't prove nothin'. Mebbe he hasn't found the oil yet. But it's here! If it ain't, why should you be fightin' so hard to get this rotten place? Tell me that, will you? n.o.body else ever wanted it--except this kindly neighbor of ours!" He glared at Hardy triumphantly.

Pell was silent. Gilbert came to himself.

"Oil!" he said. "Then this ranch, instead of being worth nothing, would be worth hundreds of thousand of dollars--maybe millions!" He had taken the bag from Pell's extended hand, and now turned in dismay and confusion to the window, and put the bag on a chair. What a world it was, and how terrible that every other man seemed to be a predatory animal, ready to spring upon his neighbor and wrest anything he had away from him. What a world, indeed! No wonder young men lost their faith and courage!

"Millions!" The word caught Uncle Henry's fancy and imagination. He rolled it over on his tongue again and again. "Millions!" He babbled it, he played with it. "Millions!"

"Yes!" Gilbert said. "Think of that!" He turned and faced the others once more.

"An' we're goin' to get skinned out of millions! Oh, my Gawd!" The poor old invalid wailed it out, and rocked himself in his chair. How he wished he could rise, step out on the floor and knock Pell and Hardy down! Why didn't his strong and husky young nephew do it? What was the matter with the present generation, anyhow? Wasn't there any red blood in it? If he had only been younger, and strong, able to fight for what he knew to be his rights! But here he was, tied down in a wheel chair, trapped, helpless, impotent.

Pell was getting nervous, "This is nonsense," he said. "There's no oil here."

During all this long harangue, Lucia had quietly come down the stairs, and now stood directly behind her husband.

"And this is why you were so anxious to come here," she said, very low; yet everyone heard her statement. "To dig around, and then, if you found oil, to try to buy this place! Oh, I thought better of you than that, Morgan!

What a trick--what a dishonorable trick!" She shuddered away from him. She almost hated him in this revealing moment.

"And why not?" was all her husband said. "Hadn't I a right to look for oil here? Suppose it was on the place?"

"You wouldn't have told him if you had found it! You know you wouldn't,"

his wife shot back at him.

Pell glared at her, fury in the look. "What do you think I am? Crazy?" he argued.

"But that isn't honest!" Lucia fearlessly said. "It's as crooked as it can be! And you know it."

"But it's legal!" Pell fired back. "And what do I care--what does anybody care--so long as it's legal! Ha! the courts would be with me! Moreover, it's the way you get the clothes you wear and the food you eat, and all those jewels that you hang on yourself when you undress and go to the opera!"

As he spoke, angrily, he went over to the chair where Gilbert had left the satchel, seized it and threw it on the floor, as though its contents were a symbol of the money she tossed away.

There was no use replying to a man like Pell. Lucia knew that. He was indignant that she had seen through his treachery. Here he was, a guest of Gilbert Jones, eating at his table day after day, pretending to be his friend, and all the while he had been planning this! And she had seemed to be a part of it all. What must Gilbert think of her? What must everybody think of her?

It was Hardy who broke the tension.

"Say," he wanted to know, "who's this woman, and what's she busting into this for? We've had enough of petticoats around here for one day, it seems to me."

Uncle Henry was swift to inform him. "I'll tell you who she is--she's his wife!" And he pointed to Pell. "But she loves _him_!" And he pointed to Gilbert.