The Law Of Hemlock Mountain Part 28

"Did you sell?"

Uncle Billy chuckled. "They up an' offered me a royalty of one-eighth of ther whole production. They proved hit up ter me by 'rithmetic an'

algebry how hit would make me rich over an' above all avarice--but I said no, I wouldn't take no eighth. I stud out fer a _sixteenth_ by crickety!"

Both Spurrier and Wharton smothered their laughter as the latter inquired gravely: "Did they play one of them royalty games."

"They done better'n thet. They said, 'We'll give ye two sixteenths,'

an' thet's when I 'lowed I was es good es a Pierpont Morgan. I wouldn't nuver hurt fer no needcessity no more."

"And what was the outcome of it all?" asked Wharton.

Uncle Jimmy's face darkened. "The come-uppance of ther whole blame business war thet a lot of pore devils what hed done been content with poverty found hit twice as hard ter go on bein' pore because they'd got to entertainin' crazy dreams ther same as me. Any man thet talks oil ter me now's got ter buy outright an' pay me spot cash. I ain't playin' no more of them royalty games."

"That's fair enough," said Wharton. "But it seems to me that you people are taking the wrong tack. Because the boom collapsed once, you are shutting the door against the possibility of its coming again--and it's going to come again."

"A man kin git stung once," volunteered another native, "an' hit's jest tough luck or bewitchment. Ef he gits stung twicet on ther same trumpery, he ain't no more then a plum', daft fool."

Wharton lighted a fresh cigar and turned toward Spurrier.

"Mr. Spurrier here, is a man you all know and trust----" he hazarded.

"I understand that he's seen oil fields in the West and Mexico. I wonder what he thinks about it all."

On the dark porch Spurrier looked at his visitor for a few minutes in silence and his first reply was a quiet question.

"Did I tell you I'd seen oil fields in operation?" he inquired, and Wharton stammered a little.

"I was under that impression," he said. "Possibly I am wrong."

"No--you are right enough," answered the other evenly. "I just didn't remember mentioning it. What is your question exactly?"

"If I have a hunch that oil holds a future here and am willing to back that hunch, don't you think I am acting wisely to do it?"

The host sat silent while he seemed to weigh the question with judicial deliberation, and during the pause he realized that the little group of men were waiting intently for his utterance as for the voice of the Delphic oracle.

"I have seen oil operation and oil development," he said at last. "I have lived here for some time and know the history of the former boom, but I have not bought a foot of ground. That ought to make my opinion clear."

"Then you don't believe in the future?"

"Don't you think, Mr. Wharton," inquired Spurrier coolly and, his listeners thought, with a shaded note of contempt, "that what I've already said, answers your question? If I _did_ believe in it, wouldn't I be likely to seek investment at the present stage of land prices?"

John Spurrier was glad that it was dark out there. He knew that the mountain men awaited his judgment as something carrying the sanction of finality and he felt like a Judas. He himself knew that back of his seeming betrayal was a determination to safeguard their rights, but the whole game of maneuvering and dissembling was as impossible to play proudly as it would have been to undertake the duties of a spy.

"I'll admit," observed Wharton modestly, "that if I lost some money, it wouldn't break me--and I'm a stubborn man when I get a hunch. Well, I'm going in to watch them dance."

He rose and went indoors and Uncle Jimmy, when he put a question acted, in effect, as spokesman for them all.

"What does ye think of thet feller, Mr. Spurrier?"

"I think," said the opportunity hound crisply, "that he's a fool, and Scripture says, 'a fool and his money are soon parted.'"

"An' ef he seeks ter buy?"

"Sell--by all means--if the price is right!"

The next day when they were alone Glory said:

"I don't like that man Wharton. He's got sneaky eyes."

Her husband laughed. "I can't say that he struck me pleasantly," he admitted. "We talked oil out on the porch. He was the optimist and I the pessimist."

And it was to happen that the first rift in Glory's lute of happiness was to come out of Wharton's agency, though she did not recognize it as his.

For in these times, despite a happiness that made her sing through the days, something like the panic of stage fright was settling over her: a thing yet of the future, but some day to be faced.

So long as life ran quietly, like the shaded streams that went down until they made the rivers of the greater and outer world, she was confident mistress of her life and had no forebodings. Spurrier loved her and she wors.h.i.+ped him--but out there beyond the ridges, the activities of his larger life were calling--or would call. Then they must leave here and she began to dread the thousand little mistakes and the humiliations that might come to him because of her unfamiliarity with that life. Since the bearings of achievement are delicate, she even feared that she might throw out of gear and poise the whole machinery of his success, and in secret Glory was poring over absurd books on etiquette and deportment. That these stereotyped instructions would only hamper her own naturally plastic spirit, she did not know when she read and reread chapters headed, "How to Enter a Drawing-room" and "Hints upon Refined Conversation."

That Spurrier would suggest going without her to any field into which his work called him, she did not dream. That he would leave her to wait for him here, as the companion only of his backwoods hours, her pride never contemplated.

Yet in the fall Spurrier did just that thing, and to the letter which induced its doing was signed the name of George Wharton. The latter wrote:

"We must begin to lay out lines for work with the next legislature.

There are people in Louisville and Lexington whom you should meet and talk with. I think you had better make your headquarters at one of the Louisville clubs, and when you get here I will put you in touch with the proper bearings."

That much might have puzzled any of the mountaineers who had taken their own cues from Spurrier's thinly concealed manner of hostility to Wharton, but the last part of the letter would have explained that, too:

"The little game down at your house was nothing short of masterly.

Your acting was superb, and though you were the star, I think I may claim to have played up to you well. The device of gaining their confidence so that, of their own accord, they turned to you for counsel--and then seeming to gloom on me when I talked oil, was pretty subtle. I could openly preach buying and instead of turning away from me in suspicion, they fell on me for a sucker.

I--and others acting for me--have, as the result, secured a good part of the options we need--and you appear to be of all men, the least interested."

Spurrier read the thing twice, then crushed it savagely in his clenched hand and cursed under his breath. "The d.a.m.ned jackals," he muttered. "That's the pack I'm running with--or rather I'm running with them and against them at once."

But when Spurrier had kissed Glory good-by and she had waved a smiling farewell, she turned back into her house and covered her face with her hands.

"I don't want to believe it," she declared. "I won't believe it--but it looks like he's ashamed to take me with him. Not that I blame him--only--only I've got to make myself over. He's _got_ to be proud of me!"

CHAPTER XVI

When he came back for a short stay in the hills between periods of quiet but strenuous affairs in Louisville, he brought gifts that delighted Glory and a devotion that made her forget her misgivings.

She had him back, and he found the house expressing in many small ways a taste and discrimination which brought to him a flush of pleasurable surprise. Glory knew the menace that hung over Spurrier. She knew of the malevolent and elusive enmities to which her own life had so nearly become forfeit, and the old terror of the mountain woman for her man became the cross that she must carry with her. Because of her militant father's antagonisms she had been inured from childhood to the taut moment of suspense that came with every voice raised at the gate and every knock sounding on the door.

There was an element of possible threat in each arrival. She had become, as one has need to be, under such circ.u.mstances, somewhat fatalistic as to the old dangers. Now that the fear embraced her husband as well as her father, the philosophy which she had cultivated failed her. Yet their happiness was so strong that it threw off these things and drew upon the treasury of the present.

Spurrier, who talked little of his own dangers, was far from forgetting. His suspicion of Colby strengthened, and he looked forward to the day as inevitable when there must be a reckoning between them, which would not be a final reckoning unless one of them died, and for that encounter he went grimly prepared.