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OLLY had the opportunity to warn her father in regard to his financial
interests sooner than she expected. The very next morning, as she sat
reading at a window in the sitting-room, she overheard the Colonel
speaking to her mother about an offer he had just had for his mountain
property.
“I believe it's a good chance for me to get rid of it,” he was
saying, as he stood at the mantel-piece dipping his pipe into his blue
tobacco-jar.
“I never did see any sense in paying taxes on land you have never seen,”
said Mrs. Barclay, at her sewing-machine. “Surely you can put the money
where it will bring in something.”
“Milburn wants it because there is about a hundred acres that could be
cleared for cultivation. I'm of the opinion that it won't make as good
soil as he thinks, but I'm not going to tell him that.”
“Would you be getting as much as it cost you?” asked Mrs. Barclay,
smoothing down a white hem with her thumb-nail.
“About five hundred more,” her husband chuckled. “People said when
I bought it that I was as big a fool as old Bishop, but you see I've
already struck a purchaser at a profit.”
Then Dolly spoke up from behind her newspaper: “I wouldn't sell it,
papa,” she said, coloring under the task before her.
“Oh, you wouldn't?” sniffed her father. “And why?”
“Because it's going to be worth a good deal more money,” she affirmed,
coloring deeper and yet looking her parent fairly in the eyes.
Mrs. Barclay broke into a rippling titter as she bent over her work.
“Alan Bishop put that in her head,” she said. “They think, the Bishops
do, that they've got a gold-mine over there.”
“You must not sell it, papa,” Dolly went on, ignoring her mother's
thrust. “I can't tell you why I don't want you to, but you must
not--you 'll be sorry if you do.”
“I don't know how I'm to keep on paying your bills for flimflam frippery
if I don't sell something,” retorted the old man, almost and yet not
quite angry. Indirectly he was pleased at her valuation of his property,
for he had discovered that her judgment was good.
“And she won't let Frank Hillhouse help,” put in Mrs. Barclay,
teasingly. “Poor fellow! I'm afraid he 'll never get over it. He's taken
to running around with school-girls--that's always a bad sign.”
“A girl ought to be made to listen to reason,” fumed Barclay, goaded on
to this attack by his wife, who well knew his sore spots, and liked to
rasp them.
“A girl will listen to the right sort of reason,” retorted Dolly, who
was valiantly struggling against an outburst. “Mamma knows how I feel.”
“I know that you are bent on marrying a man without a dollar to his
name,” said her father. “You want to get into that visionary gang that
will spend all I leave you in their wild-cat investments, but I tell you
I will cut you out of my property if you do. Now, remember that. I mean
it.”
Dolly crushed the newspaper in her lap and rose. “There is no good
in quarrelling over this again,” she said, coldly. “Some day you will
understand the injustice you are doing Alan Bishop. I could make you
see it now, but I have no right to explain.” And with that she left the
room.
Half an hour later, from the window of her room up-stairs, she saw old
Bobby Milburn open the front gate. Under his slouch hat and big gray
shawl he thumped up the gravelled walk and began to scrape his feet
on the steps. There was a door-bell, with a handle like that of a
coffee-mill, to be turned round, but old Bobby, like many of his kind,
either did not know of its existence, or, knowing, dreaded the use
of innovations that sometimes made even stoics like himself feel
ridiculous. His method of announcing himself was by far more sensible,
as it did not even require the removal of his hands from his pockets;
and, at the same time, helped divest his boots of mud. He stamped on
the floor of the veranda loudly and paused to listen for the approach of
some one to admit him. Then, as no one appeared, he clattered along the
veranda to the window of the sitting-room and peered in. Colonel
Barclay saw him and opened the door, inviting the old fellow into the
sitting-room. Old Bobby laid his hat on the floor beside his chair as he
sat down, but he did not unpin his shawl.
“Well, I've come round to know what's yore lowest notch, Colonel,” he
said, gruffly, as he brushed his long, stringy hair back from his ears
and side whiskers. “You see, it's jest this way. I kin git a patch o'
land from Lank Buford that will do me, in a pinch, but I like yore'n
a leetle grain better, beca'se it's nigher my line by a quarter or so;
but, as I say, I kin make out with Buford's piece; an' ef we cayn't
agree, I 'll have to ride over whar he is workin' in Springtown.”
At this juncture Dolly came into the room. She shook hands with
the visitor, who remained seated and mumbled out some sort of gruff
greeting, and went to her chair near the window, taking up her paper
again. Her eyes, however, were on her father's face.
“I hardly know what to say,” answered Barclay, deliberately. “Your price
the other day didn't strike me just right, and so I really haven't been
thinking about it.”
There was concession enough, Dolly thought, in Milburn's eye, if not in
his voice, when he spoke. “Well,” he said, carelessly, “bein' as me'n
you are old friends, an' thar always was a sort o' neighborly feelin'
betwixt us, I 'll agree, if we trade, to hire a lawyer an' a scribe to
draw up the papers an' have 'em duly recorded. You know that's always
done by the party sellin'.”
“Oh, that's a _little_ thing,” said the Colonel; but his watchful
daughter saw that the mere smallness of Milburn's raise in his offer had
had a depressing effect on her father's rather doubtful valuation of
the property in question. The truth was that Wilson had employed the
shrewdest trader in all that part of the country, and one who worked
all the more effectively for his plainness of dress and rough manner.
“That's a little thing,” went on the Colonel, “but here's what I 'll
do--”
“Father,” broke in Dolly, “don't make a proposition to Mr. Milburn.
Please don't.”
Milburn turned to her, his big brows contracting in surprise, but he
controlled himself. “Heigho!” he laughed, “so you've turned trader, too,
Miss Dolly? Now, I jest wish my gals had that much enterprise; they git
beat ef they buy a spool o' thread.”
The Colonel frowned and Mrs. Barclay turned to Dolly with a real tone of
reproof. “Don't interfere in your father's business,” she said. “He can
attend to it.”
The Colonel was not above making capital of the interruption, and he
smiled down on the shaggy visitor.
“She's been deviling the life out of me not to part with that land. They
say women have the intuition to look ahead better than men. I don't know
but I ought to listen to her, but she ain't running me, and as I was
about to say--”
“Wait just one minute, papa!” insisted Dolly, with a grim look of
determination on her face. “Just let me speak to you a moment in the
parlor, and then you can come back to Mr. Milburn.”
The face of the Colonel darkened under impatience, but he was afraid
failure to grant his daughter's request would look like over-anxiety to
close with Mil-burn, and so he followed her into the parlor across the
hallway.
“Now, what on earth is the matter with you?” he demanded, sternly. “I
have never seen you conduct yourself like this before.”
She faced him, touching his arms with her two hands.
“Father, don't be angry with me,” she said, “but when you know what I
do, you will be glad I stopped you just now. Mr. Milburn is not buying
that land for his own use.”
“He isn't?” exclaimed the Colonel.
“No; he's secretly employed by a concern worth over two million
dollars--the Southern Land and Timber Company of Atlanta.”
“What?” the word came out as suddenly as if some one had struck him on
the breast.
“No,” answered the girl, now pale and agitated. “To save Mr. Bishop
from loss, Alan and Rayburn Miller have worked up a scheme to build a
railroad from Darley to the Bishop property. All arrangements have been
made. There can be no hitch in it unless the citizens refuse to grant
a right of way. In a week from now a meeting is to be advertised. Of
course, it is not a certainty, but you can see that the chance is good,
and you ought not to sacrifice your land.”
“Good Heavens!” ejaculated Barclay, his eyes distended, “is this a
fact?”
“I am telling you what I have really no right to reveal,” said Dolly,
“but I promised Alan not to let you sell if I could help it.”
The Colonel was staggered by the revelation; his face was working under
strong excitement. “I thought that old rascal”--he meant Milburn--“was
powerfully anxious to trade. Huh! Looky' here, daughter, this news
is almost too good to be true. Why, another railroad would make my
town-lots bound up like fury, and as for this mountain-land--whew! It
may be as you say. Ray Miller certainly is a wheel-horse.”
“It was not his idea,” said Dolly, loyally. “In fact, he tried his best
to discourage Alan at first--till he saw what could be done. Since then
he's been secretly working at it night and day.”
“Whew!” whistled the Colonel. “I don't care a cent _whose_ idea it is;
if it goes through it's a good one, and, now that I think of it, the
necessary capital is all that is needed to make a big spec' over there.”
“So you won't sell to Mr. Milburn, then?” asked Dolly, humbly grateful
for her father's change of mood.
“Sell to that old dough-faced scamp?” snorted Barclay. “Well, he 'll
think I won't in a minute! Do you reckon I don't want to have some
sort o' finger in the pie? Whether the road's built or not, I want my
chance.”
“But remember I am giving away state secrets,” said Dolly. “He must not
know that you have heard about the road.”
“I 'll not give that away,” the old man promised, with a smile, and he
turned to the door as if eager to face Milburn. “Huh! That old scamp
coming here to do me one! The idea!”
The two men, as they faced each other a moment later, presented an
interesting study of human forces held well in check. The Colonel leaned
on the mantel-piece and looked down at the toe of his boot, with which
he pushed a chunk of wood beneath the logs.
“You never can tell about a woman' s whims, Mil-burn,” he said. “Dolly's
set her heart on holding onto that land, and I reckon I'm too easily
wriggled about by my women folks. I reckon we'd better call it off.”
“Oh, all right--all right!” said Milburn, with a start and a sharp
contraction of his brows. “I'm that away some myse'f. My gals git me
into devilish scrapes sometimes, an' I'm always sayin' they got to stop
it. A man loses too much by lettin' 'em dabble in his business. But I
was jest goin' to say that I mought raise my bid fifty cents on the acre
ruther than trapse away over to Springtown to see Buford.”
There was silence through which several kinds of thoughts percolated.
The raise really amounted to so much that it materially increased
Barclay's growing conviction that the railroad was next to a certainty.
“Huh!” he grunted, his eyes ablaze with the amusement of a winner. “I
wouldn't listen to less than a dollar more on the acre.” And as the
gaze of Milburn went down reflectively the Colonel winked slyly, even
triumphantly, at his smiling daughter and said: “Dolly thinks it will
make good land for a peach-orchard. Lots of money is being made that
way.”
“Bosh!” grunted Milburn. “It don't lie right fer peaches. You kin git
jest as much property nigh the railroad as you want fer peaches. You
are a hard man to trade with, but I reckon I 'll have to take yore offer
of--”
“Hold on, hold on!” laughed the Colonel, his hand upraised. “I didn't
say I'd _take_ that price. I just said I wouldn't listen to less than
a dollar raise. I've listened to many a thing I didn't jump at, like a
frog in muddy water, not knowing what he's going to butt against.”
Under his big shawl Milburn rose like a tent blown upward by wind.
He was getting angry as he saw his commission money taking wing and
flitting out of sight. He had evidently counted on making an easy victim
of Barclay. For a moment he stood twisting his heavy, home-knit gloves
in his horny hands.
“Now if it's a fair question,” he said, as the last resort of a man
ready and willing to trade at any reasonable cost, “what _will_ you
take, cash down, on your honor between us--me to accept or decline?”
The Colonel's pleasure was of the bubbling, overflowing kind. Every move
made by Milburn was adding fuel to his hopes of the proposed railroad,
and to his determination to be nobody's victim.
“Look here,” he said, “that land has been rising at such a rate since
you came in that I'm actually afraid to let it go. By dinner-time it may
make me rich. Dolly, I believe, on my word, Milburn has discovered gold
over there. Haven't you, Milburn? Now, honor bright.”
“It will be a long time before you find gold or anything else on that
land,” Milburn retorted, as he reached for his hat and heavily strode
from the room.
“Well! I do declare,” and Mrs. Barclay turned to Dolly and her father.
“What on earth does this mean?” The Colonel laughed out, then slapped
his hand over his mouth, as he peered from the window to see if Milburn
was out of hearing. “It's just this way--”
“Mind, father!” cautioned Dolly. “Do you want it to be all over town by
dinner-time?”
“Dolly!” cried Mrs. Barclay, “the idea of such a thing!”
Dolly smiled and patted her mother on the cheek.
“Don't tell her, papa,” she said, with decision.
“The truth is,” said the Colonel, “Dolly really wants to plant peaches.
I don't think there's much in it, but she will have her way.”
“Well, I call that _mean_ of you,” retorted Mrs. Barclay, dark with
vexation. “Well, miss, I 'll bet you didn't tell your father who you went
sleigh-riding with.”
The old man frowned suddenly. “Not with Alan Bishop,” he said, “after my
positive orders?”
“He came to tell me about the--the”--Dolly glanced at her mother
suddenly--“about the peaches, papa.”
“Well”--the Colonel was waxing angry--“I won't have it--that's all. I
won't have you--”
“Wait, papa,” entreated the girl, sweetly, “wait till we see about
the--peaches!” And, with a little teasing laugh, she left the room.