The Spoilers of the Valley Part 76

Jim took up the telephone and got into communication with Peter Brixton then and there.

"Hullo! 276? This is the Langford-Ralston Company. That you, Peter?"

"Yes!"

"Have just been commissioned by eastern capital to purchase a sixty acre ranch. Got anything in sight?"

"Yes!--there's the Metford Place on the B.X."

"No good, Peter! They want it in the Coldcreek district. I have several good prospects in view, but I rather fancy Eddie Farleigh's ranch. I hear it is up for sale."

"It is too!"

"What does he want for it?"

"Thirty thousand,--a third cash, the balance in twelve and twenty-four months!"

"Uhm! She's kind of high. Still,--it might be worth considering. What commission do you want out of it?"

"It's a five per cent deal, and I'm willing to split it with you;--if you'll do the same when the shoe's on the other foot."

Peter did not tell Jim that the actual price set by Farleigh was twenty-eight thousand dollars and whatever could be got above that figure would be reckoned as the broker's commission.

Jim thought for a moment. Again the voice came.

"Or I'll take a third and you get two-thirds. I'll get the double portion any time I sell any of yours."

"That's a go!--the agent who sells gets two-thirds of the commission.

Well!--run down, Peter, and give me the exact lay-out and maybe we can close the deal. I want to put the sale through first thing in the morning and it has to show as coming direct through the Langford-Ralston Company."

"Right! I'll come now," answered Brixton, putting up the receiver.

Jim's grin was a treat to behold as he jumped up and caught Phil by both arms.

"Two-thirds of fifteen hundred dollars,--one thousand dollars! Oh, boy!--we're on the upgrade already."

The prairie farmer would have been inclined to question the wisdom of his purchase had he seen the Langford-Ralston Financial Corporation hopping round its office like a pair of dancing bears. But he did not see it, and, what was more to the point, he never rued his bargain.

CHAPTER XXIII

So Deep in Love am I

It was not long before Phil and Jim found out that although few people in Vernock were willing to lend hard cash, many of them were friendly, even indulgent, and quite ready to encourage any honest enterprise, and brotherly enough to give a new man a fighting chance.

A week had not gone before outsiders began to see that Jim Langford had at last found himself. He did not develop, but rather he utilised what he had always possessed, the powers of winning confidence, of persuasion, of argument; combined with a shrewdness for sizing up his clients and knowing instinctively what they wanted, what they were prepared to go in price, and consequently, what to show them.

And Phil was not a whit behind, for the spirit of emulation was rife in him. He had been born with a burning ambition to succeed, and now that he saw a lifetime chance, he exerted all his power of mind and body to take advantage of it to the full.

The banking account of the Langford-Ralston Company did not fall lower than that consternation mark of three thousand dollars, and it rapidly increased with the advent of the spring suns.h.i.+ne and the incoming settlers who in ever-increasing numbers had heard of the fertility and the climatic perfection of the Valley; and hearing, came to see; and seeing, succ.u.mbed to Dame Nature's seductiveness. Sales increased; so did the new company's listings. So rapidly did the Langford-Ralston Financial Corporation go ahead that the other real-estate men in town began to sit up and gasp. They had given the "mushroom outfit"

anything from a week to six weeks in which to crumple up, but they rapidly withdrew the time-limit, contenting themselves with wait-and-see, wise-acre nods of their heads.

For the first time since leaving his home, Jim took it upon himself to communicate with his father, who was the head of an old firm of Edinburgh Solicitors and Lawyers. True, his method of communication was somewhat impersonal, consisting as it did solely of a continuous weekly bombardment of pamphlets on the fruit-growing possibilities of the Okanagan Valley, with the Langford-Ralston Corporation writ large on the advertis.e.m.e.nts thereon; printed dodgers of sub-divisions and ranching first mortgage propositions issued by the Company every few days; and copies of the _Vernock and District Advertiser_ containing the Langford-Ralston Company's regular full-page advertis.e.m.e.nt.

"Why don't you write to him?" asked Phil one day.

Jim laughed.

"Because I know him!" he answered. "If I wrote to him, he'd smell a rat. But the constant drip will have its effect, laddie. His firm has money by the train-load to lend out on good security,--but the security has got to be good. It won't be long before he is making inquiries through some of the banks. Why, man!--I know that Fraser & Somerville placed a quarter of a million dollars for him on first mortgages a year or so ago. Why shouldn't we have it?"

In response to Phil's peculiar look, Jim went on.

"Oh, ay!--you may glower. I know I've been a rotter, and I don't think I deserve any confidences from my old dad. I never played the game with him. All the same, I'm not going to crawl to him for all the money on earth. I've come to myself at last and I mean to show him I am still worthy to be called his son,--as the Good Book says. If he is interested in our legitimate business and cares to get in touch in a business-like way, we'll be mighty glad to show him what we've got and accept his fatted calf, or should I say, golden calf, with becoming dignity."

"Well, Jim,--you're lucky," reflected Phil. "I doubt if my father knows now that I am alive. He was a mighty good dad to me, but he doesn't seem to have allowed much for youthful impetuosity and indiscretion. Evidently, he has never forgiven me for refusing to accept a new mother on a moment's notice. You may say what you like about Brenchfield, but if it hadn't been for the kindness of his father and mother, G.o.d only knows what and where I would have been to-day."

"Yes, Sentimental Tommy! And you paid all of it back, a thousand per cent,--so forget that part! A fat lot Graham Brenchfield did for you, personally."

"Oh, yes!--but still----"

"Oh, you make me tired with your excuses for that coyote;--forget it! But, if your dad was so good to you when you were a kiddie, for the life of me I'm darned if I can understand where his paternal instinct has got to. If I had a laddie,--G.o.d save me for indulging in such a fantasy!--but, if I did have, I'd go after him if he were in h.e.l.l itself. Think o' it, Phil! Your own flesh and blood, of the woman you have loved well enough to make your wife--the combination transfused--to grow, and develop, and work out to prove before G.o.d and his fellow-man the wisdom or folly of the choice the father and mother of him made when they took each other for better or worse."

"Yes,--when you put it that way, Jim, it makes a man think hard of the tremendous seriousness of the step."

Jim grinned again.

"You needn't worry, anyway. If you keep on as you are doing, you'll win the best and bonniest la.s.sie in this Valley."

Phil quickly changed the subject, but a tell-tale ruddiness added to the confirmations that Jim had been acc.u.mulating along that particular line.

"Talking about my dad, Jim!" reverted Phil, "it is strange the longings I have at times to see him and to patch up the old breach, even if I might never be permitted to see him again after that.

But,--oh, well!--what's the use? I won't trouble inquiring about him now--it is too late. And I guess he isn't worrying about me. All the same, I'd give my right hand to see my little sister, Margery. When I ran away, she was a bright, mischievous, fair-haired, little girl, just starting school. She and I were the great chums. She will be growing quite a young lady now.

"I fight the feeling, Jim,--but some day I fear the pulling from her end will be too strong for me and I'll go back and hunt them up--if only to stand in the shadows and watch her pa.s.s."

Jim looked at his watch and got up to fulfil a business engagement.

"Well, old man!--I never had a little sister. If I had had, I fancy I wouldn't be here to-day. So that's how it goes. But we have a good year ahead of us to buy and sell and loan for a fare-you-well; to make a stake as big as all the others have made together in the last three or four years. And we are going to do it, too. I feel it in the air.

"I don't know what will happen after that--some of the big fellows, Royce Pederstone, Brenchfield and Arbuthnot are overloaded now, but they keep on mortgaging and buying more. The newer ranchers here have planted their orchards and are sitting still for the 'seven lean years' till their orchards begin to bear, instead of getting busy with truck stuff, poultry and pigs to keep them going. Some of them are feeling the pinch already, for it costs like the devil to live here--especially the way these fellows insist on living. They also are mortgaging heavily. Man, if any kind of a slump came in realty, or a shortage of money, and the banks shut down and the money-lenders started to draw in their capital, there would be a veritable stampede.

"I give it a year, boy; then, if we've got the money, that's the time to put it in, for, a few years more and all these baby orchards about the Valley will be paying for themselves over and over again.

"Half of the ranchers in the meantime are going to get cold feet, because they won't be able to get their stuff to the paying markets, while, if they only organised--as they undoubtedly will do later--they could get their fruit anywhere and at a big price, too.

"But--that's where we can get in."