Patchwork Part 28

Just as they reached the kitchen door, where Mother Bab was looking for them, the hail came.

"It's hail, Mommie," David said. The three words held all the worry and pain of his heart.

"Never mind"--the little mother patted his shoulder. "It's hail for more people than we know, perhaps for some who are much poorer than we are."

"But the tobacco----" He stood by the window, impotent and weak, while the devastating hail pounded and rattled and smote the broad leaves of his tobacco and rendered it almost worthless.

"Won't new leaves grow again?" Phbe tried to cheer him.

"Not this late in the summer. My tobacco was almost ready to be cut; it was unusually early this year."

"Well," spoke up the preacher, "I can't see why you always plant tobacco. Smoking and chewing tobacco are filthy habits. I can't see why so many people of this section plant the weed when the soil could be used to produce some useful grain or vegetable."

"Yes"--David turned and addressed his cousin fiercely--"it's easy enough for you to talk! You with your big farm and orchards and every crop a success! Your bank account is so fat that you don't need to care whether your acres bring in a big return or a lean one. But when you have just a few acres you plant the thing that will be likely to bring in the most money. You know many poor people plant tobacco for that reason, and that is why I plant it."

"Davie," the mother said, "Davie!"

"I know," he said bitterly. "I'm a beast when my temper gets beyond control, but Phares can be so confounded irritating, he rubs salt in your cuts every time."

"Just for healing," the mother said gently.

"David," said Phbe, "I guess the temper is a little bit of that Irish showing up."

At that David smiled, then laughed.

"Phbe," he said, "you know how to rub people the right way. If ever I have the blues you are just the right medicine."

"I don't want to be called medicine," she said with a shake of her head.

"Not even a sugar pill?" asked Mother Bab.

"No. I don't like the sound of _pill_."

David looked across at the preacher, who stood silent and helpless in the swift tide of conversation. "You may be right, Phares. It may be the wrath of Providence upon the tobacco. I'll try alfalfa in that field next and then I'll rub Aladdin's lamp. I'll make some money then!"

"Where do you find Aladdin's lamp?" asked Phbe.

"I can't tell you now. But I know I'm tired of slaving and having nothing for my work, so I am going after the magic lamp."

CHAPTER XIV

ALADDIN'S LAMP

THE morning after the hail storm dawned fair and suns.h.i.+ny. David went out and stood at the edge of his tobacco field. All about him the hail had wrought its destruction. Where yesterday broad, thick leaves of green tobacco had stood out strong and vigorous there hung only limp shreds, punctured and torn into worthlessness.

"All wasted, my summer's work. I'll rub that magic lamp now. Fool that I was, not to do it sooner!"

A little later, as he walked down the road to town, his lips were closed in a resolute line, his shoulders squared in soldierly fas.h.i.+on. "I hope Caleb Warner is in his office," he thought.

Caleb Warner was in; he greeted David cordially.

"Good-morning, Dave. How are things out your way? Hail do much damage?"

"Some damage," echoed the farmer. "It hailed just about four hundred dollars' worth too much for me."

"What, you don't say so! That's the trouble with your farming."

Caleb Warner was an affable little man with a frank, almost innocent, look on his smooth-shaven face. Spontaneous interest in his friends'

affairs made him an agreeable companion and helped materially to increase his clientele--Caleb Warner dealt in real estate and, incidentally, in oil stocks and gold stocks.

"That's just the trouble with your farming," he repeated. "You slave and break your back and crops are fine and you hope to have a good return for your labor, when along comes a hail storm and ruins your fruit or tobacco or corn, or along comes a dry spell or a wet spell with the same result. It sounds mighty fine to say the farmer is the most independent person on the face of the earth--it's a different proposition when you try it out. Not so?"

"I'm about convinced you speak the truth about it," said the farmer.

"I know I do. I used to be a farmer, but I have grown wiser. I think there are too many other ways to make money with less risk."

"That is why I came----" David hesitated, but the other man waited silently for the explanation. "Have you any more of the gold-mine stock you offered me some time ago?"

"That Nevada mine?"

"Yes."

"Just one thousand dollars' worth; the rest is all cleaned out. I sold a thousand yesterday. Listen, Dave, there's the chance of your life. You know how I worked on that farm of mine, how my wife had to slave, how even Mary had to work hard. Then one day a friend of mine who had gone west came to me and offered me some stock in a western gold mine. My wife was afraid of it, said I'd lose every cent I put in it and we'd have to go to the poorhouse--women don't generally understand about investments. But I went ahead and got the stock, and in a few years I sold out part of it for a neat sum and drew big dividends on what I kept. Then we moved to town; my wife keeps a maid, Mary goes to college, and we're living instead of slaving our lives away on a farm. And it's honestly made money, for the gold was put into the earth for us to use.

It is just a case of running a little risk, but no person loses money because of your risk. Of course, there's lots of stock sold that's not worth the paper it's written on, but I don't sell that kind."

"People trust you here," said David.

If the man winced or had reason to do so, he betrayed no sign of it. "I hope so," he said. "You have known me all my life. If I ever want to work any skin game I'll go out of the place where all my friends are.

This mine of which I speak is near the mine at Goldfield and some of the veins struck recently are richer than those of the renowned Goldfield.

They are still striking deeper veins. I have sold stock in that mine to fifteen people in this town."

He mentioned some of the residents of Greenwald; people who, in David's opinion, were too shrewd to be entangled in any nefarious investment.

The names impressed David--if those fifteen put their money into it he might as well be the sixteenth.

In a little while David Eby walked home with a paper representing the owners.h.i.+p of a number of shares of a certain gold mine in Nevada, while Caleb Warner patted musingly a check for five hundred dollars.

Mother Bab wondered at her boy's philosophical acceptance of his crop failure. "I'm glad you take it this way," she said as he came in, whistling, from his trip to Greenwald.

"What's the use of crying?" he answered gaily, though he felt far from gay. Had he been too hasty? Doubts began to a.s.sail him. It was going to be hard to deceive his mother, she was always so eager for his confidence. But, then, he was doing it for her sake as much as for his own. The war clouds were drawing nearer and nearer to this country; if the time came when America would enter the war he would have to answer the call for help. If the stock turned out to be what the other wise men of the town felt confident it would be then the added money would be a boon to his mother while he was away in the service of his country--and yet--it was a great risk he was running. Why had he done it? The old lines of the poem came back to him and burned into his soul,

"O what a tangled web we weave When first we practice to deceive."

Then, again, swift upon that thought came the old proverb, "Nothing venture, nothing gain." Thus he was torn between doubt and satisfaction, but it was too late to undo the deed. He was the owner of the stock and Caleb Warner had the five hundred dollars!