The Long Chance Part 19

Now, while recovering from his wound at the Hat Ranch, Bob had brooded much over the difficulties which would without doubt a.s.sail him in his attempt to acquire his lands in Owens river valley; also he had figured out to his own satisfaction the exact method by which the land-grabber was enabled to grab; or, provided the grabber did not care to retain his grab, how he could nevertheless derive tremendous profits from his control of certain officials in the State Land Office. Therefore, after his day spent in the public law library in San Francisco, Bob's brain was primed with every detail of the land laws, and had confirmed his original interpretation of the land-grabbers' clever schemes to defraud.

However, not satisfied with his own opinion, he decided to seek a little expert advice on the subject, and to that end he went the following morning to his father's old friend and his own former employer, Homer Dunstan, the corporation attorney, whom he knew to be an authority on land law.

He sent in his name by Dunstan's stenographer, and presently Dunstan appeared in the reception room. He welcomed his old friend's failure of a son in a manner which bespoke forced heartiness, for old sake's sake, and a preconceived impression that the ill-dressed, pale Bob McGraw had come to him to borrow money. They shook hands and stood for a moment looking at each other.

"Glad to see you again, Bobby, after all these years. You've grown.

Where in the world have you been ranging since I saw you last?" Homer Dunstan was forcing an interest in Bob McGraw which he was far from feeling, and Bob was not insensible to this.

He grinned. "Drifting, Mr. Dunstan--just drifting. Mines and mining--mostly the latter; there's a difference, you know. It's my inheritance, Mr. Dunstan, despite all poor old dad did to make me follow in your footsteps. So I've quit bucking the inevitable and turned wanderer. Do you happen to be engaged with a client just now?"

"Well--no, not just this minute. Perhaps if you'll call--"

"No, I will not call later. My motto is 'Do it now.' Seeing that you're regularly in the business of dispensing legal advice, I'd like to take advantage of the ever-active present." He pulled from his hip pocket a tattered wallet and produced a hundred-dollar bill. "Mr. Dunstan, how much expert legal advice can you give me for that?"

Dunstan's manner underwent a swift metamorphosis. "Oh, put back your money, boy. I have an hour to spare this morning, and for your father's sake my advice to you will always be given gratis on Mondays and Fridays."

"Glad I called on Friday, even if it is an unlucky day. Your generosity knocks that superst.i.tion galley-west, so I'll take you at your word.

Also I will gladly retain this century. To tell the truth I have urgent need of it for other things," and he followed Dunstan into the latter's private office. Dunstan indicated an easy chair and presented his ex-a.s.sistant with a fifty-cent cigar.

"Well, Bobby, my boy, what's on your soul this morning?"

"A very heavy weight, Mr. Dunstan. Desert land. Acres and acres of it."

"Any water?"

"Not yet."

"Any prospect?!"

"I have it bottled up, and it's all mine. Now I want the land."

"Well?"

"I want to acquire thirty-two thousand acres of state lieu land in Owens river valley, Mr. Dunstan."

"You cannot do it."

"Well, suppose there was a rule in the State Land Office which forced prospective purchasers of state lieu lands to first designate the basis of exchange before their applications would be received and filed.

Suppose also that you wanted to turn crook and steal thirty-two thousand acres of lieu land, despite this rule. How would you go about it?"

The lawyer glanced at him keenly. "See here, son, I don't give that kind of advice to young fellows--or old fellows for that matter--even for money. I'm an honest corporation attorney, and stealing the public domain is illegal--and very, very risky."

"Don't worry, sir. When I have your advice, I will not follow it. Tell me how you would steal this land. It's a hypothetical question."

Dunstan smiled. "That's unfair--attacking a lawyer with a hypothetical question. It's rather hoisting him on his own petard, as it were.

However, I'll answer it. In the first place, if I planned to go into the business of looting the public domain I would conspire with some prominent official of the State Land Office to inst.i.tute such a rule."

"Good. Somebody conspired with a surveyor-general forty years ago and had such a rule inst.i.tuted in the State Land Office. The state legislature, however, has never been asked to confirm that rule and spread it in black and white on the statute books."

"Well, having had such a rule inst.i.tuted" continued Dunstan, "I would then have the public at a disadvantage. Through my friend in the land office I would have primary access to the field notes of the chief of staff in the field, and I would have advance information of where losses of school lands were soon to occur. In other words I would be in position to designate every basis of exchange of lost school lands for lieu lands, and the public would not. I'd give some weak brother say one hundred dollars to file on some lieu lands and use the basis which I would designate, and in the meantime I would hustle around, secure in the knowledge that I had the basis tied up. It would appear of record as used in the state land office. When I had secured a customer for the lieu land I had tied up with my dummy applicant, the dummy would abandon his filing in favor of my client, I would collect the difference between the statutory cost of the land and the price my client paid me for it, whack up with my friends in the land office and consider myself a smart business man."

Bob nodded. "I figured it out that way also. Now, suppose an outsider--myself, for instance--succeeded in getting his application filed without designating the basis for the exchange of lands, and the surveyor-general has issued me a receipt for my preliminary payment of twenty dollars on account of the purchase of the lieu land--what then?

When he discovered I was an outsider, could he reject my application?"

"Well, he might try, Bob. But with his receipt in your possession, that would be bona-fide evidence of an implied contract of bargain and sale between you and the State of California. You could inst.i.tute a mandamus suit and force him to make the selection of lieu lands for you."

"I figured it out that way" said Bob musingly. "The only rift in the surveyor-general's lute is the fact that while he has never yet b.u.mped up against the right man, he is due to so b.u.mp in the very near future.

However, Mr. Dunstan, I do not think our present surveyor-general is doing business with the land ring. I think the guilty man is one of his deputies through whom ninety-nine per cent of the office routine is transacted, and the land-grabbers have him under their thumbs."

"Then why not go direct to the surveyor-general with your troubles?"

queried Dunstan.

Bob shook his head. "No hope in that direction. The office records show all bases used, and the deputy--the surveyor-general, in fact--can find defense for their arbitrary ruling in the matter of designation of the basis--by claiming that their office force is not large enough to permit of such extended search of the records; hence they turn their records over to the applicant of lieu lands and let him search for himself. The surveyor-general, being honest, will be hard to convince that his deputy is not--particularly since the deputy is probably an old friend."

"It's a peculiar condition" said Dunstan. "The worst that can happen to the deputy is to lose his job, the dummy entryman can abandon his filing at any time he may elect, and there is no law making it a felony to accept money in exchange for information--if you do not state where you acquired it. How are you going to stop this looting?"

"I'm not quite certain that I want it stopped--right away" said Bob, and grinned his lazy inscrutable smile. "I want to do a little grabbing myself, only I want to do it legally. I have a scheme worked out to do this, but I want you to confirm it. Just now you schemed out a plan to get public lands illegally, and you ought to be able to scheme a plan to get them legally, operating on the state lieu land basis. I want thirty-two thousand acres of desert land and the law only allows me a selection of six hundred and forty. I want to get this thirty-two thousand acres without corrupting any weakling in the employ of the state, without paying money to dummy entrymen, without designating the basis for the selection of my fifty sections, without antagonizing the land ring and without disturbing that rule of the State Land Office, can it be done?"

Dunstan frowned at his visitor. "Of course it cannot be done" he retorted sharply. "Why do you ask me such fool questions?"

"Because it might be done--with a little luck and some money."

Dunstan shook his head. "There is only one way for you to acquire desert land, Bob, without disturbing the rule in that land office. You'll have to file on a half-section only, under the Desert Land Law of the United States of America, paying twenty-five cents per acre down at the time of filing your application. Then you must place one-eighth of it under cultivation and produce a reasonably profitable crop. You must spend not less than, three dollars per acre in improvements, and convince the government that the entire tract, if not actually under irrigation, is at least susceptible to it. That accomplished, you can pay the balance of one dollar per acre due on the land, prove up and secure a patent.

That's the only way you can secure desert lands without doing some of the things you wish to avoid doing."

Bob shook his head. "Too slow, too expensive and generally irritating.

Why, I'd have to live on the land until I could prove up!"

"Well, then, Bobby boy, put your scruples behind you and pay somebody to live on it and prove up for you." "No use" mourned Bob. "I can see myself at the head of a long procession of desert-land enthusiasts, bound for McNeill's Island, and I'm too young to waste my youth making little rocks out of big ones. Even if the attorney-general didn't have me on the carpet, I'd have to ride herd on one hundred dummy entrymen with a Gatling gun, or else equip each one with an Oregon boot. My land lies in a devil's country and I don't think they'd stay. You see, Mr.

Dunstan, were it not for that confounded rule I mentioned, I could purchase a full section of desert land in the public domain, under the provisions of the state lieu land law. Under that law the land would only cost me one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, while under the United Slates Desert Land Laws it would cost me not less than four dollars and a quarter per acre. Too much money for Bob McGraw. Now, Owens river valley is pure desert, Mr. Dunstan, and it lies, or will lie, very shortly, in the public domain. It is not agricultural land, neither is it coal-bearing nor timbered, so I can purchase it by the full section, which will only require fifty entrymen. Besides, there have never been any entries made heretofore in the section of the valley that I have my eye on, and I'd like to get my land in one strip without having it checker-boarded with adverse holdings."

Dunstan smiled a little wearily. "But we're not getting anywhere, Bob, my boy. You're simply wasting your breath. Just what nebulous idea for the acquisition of this desert land have you floating around in that red head of yours? Now, then, proposition Number One."

"I cannot oppose that rule. I must sneak my applications in and get them filed and secure a receipt, when I will be in position to force the attorney-general to make the selections for my clients."

"Oh, they're clients, eh?" said Dunstan. "I thought they were to be dummy entrymen."

"They are--but they don't know it--and not knowing it, they will not be committing a crime."

"Ignorance of the law excuses n.o.body, Robert. But proceed with proposition Number Two."

"My clients are to be paupers--so I must pay for the land which they will file upon. Hence I shall need money."

Homer Dunstan figured rapidly on a desk pad.

Notarial fees on fifty applications @ $ .50 $ 25.00 Filing fees " " " @ 5.00 250.00 First payment " " @ 20.00 1000.00 _______________ Total, $1275.00

"It will take $1275 to start you off, Bob, presuming, for the sake of argument, that your filings are accepted--which, of course, they will not be."

"Oh, I have the twelve seventy-five, all right" said Bob confidently.