STRANGERS ASK QUESTIONS
When Faith and Angus got back to the ranch Godfrey French's funeral was
over. Faith did not pretend to be specially grieved.
"But of course I must go and see Kathleen," she said.
She went alone, for Angus would not go. He held no particular
ill-feeling toward Godfrey French, but as French had held it toward him
he thought it best to stay away. When Faith had gone he pottered about
the house, stables and sheds, taking an inventory, estimating the value
of the things he could sell, deciding where they could be sold to the
best advantage. There were the tools, implements, rigs, cut crops,
horses and stock on the range. He jotted down a rough estimate and
frowned at the result. Still it was the best he could do.
Chetwood appeared. "Busy?" he queried.
"I've just been figuring up what I can sell and what I can get for it."
"You haven't sold anything yet?"
"No, I'll hold off till the place itself is sold."
"Somebody might bid it up to a good figure."
"Nobody is apt to bid. Nobody here with enough loose money. No,
Braden'll get the place, I guess."
"Old blighter!" Chetwood grunted. "But you never can tell. 'The
best-laid schemes of mice and men' and all that sort of thing. Let's
talk of something else--something I want to talk about."
"Fire away," said Angus.
"Jean and I are thinking of getting married," Chetwood told him bluntly.
"The devil you are!" Angus exclaimed. He was not exactly surprised at
the news, but at the time of its announcement.
"I like you," Angus admitted, "but I don't know a great deal about you.
You're working for wages which aren't very large. They won't keep two."
"No more they will," Chetwood replied. "Jean suggests that I take up a
homestead." Angus shook his head. "You don't like the idea? No more do
I. I shan't do it."
"Have you any idea what you will do? I gathered that you lost what money
you had in some fool investment. You never told me what it was."
"I don't look on it as totally lost," Chetwood responded. "It may be all
right some day. One thing I'll promise you, old man, I won't marry Jean
till I have something definite to go on."
"Good boy!" Angus approved. "That's sense. I'm going to look up a bunch
of land in one of the new districts. When I find what I want Jean will
come and live with us, of course. Then we might make some
arrangement--if you want to buck the ranching game."
When Chetwood had gone, presumably to find Jean, Angus was restless. He
liked Chetwood, but the Lord alone knew when the latter would be in
shape to support a wife unless somebody helped him. He would have to do
that. The fancy took him to walk around the ranch for a last look as
owner. As he walked a hundred recollections crowded upon him. Here there
had been a good crop in one year; there a failure in another. Here was
the place where he had first held the handles of a plow. This was where
a team had run away with a mower. He arrived at the gate and looked
back over the fields. To-day they were his; to-morrow in all likelihood
they would belong to Braden.
Looking up the road he saw a light rig with two men. One of them was
standing up in it, apparently surveying his surroundings through a pair
of field glasses. Presently he sat down and the team came on. By the
gate the driver pulled up and nodded.
"Afternoon!" he said. He was a thickset, deeply tanned man of middle
age, with a shrewd, blue eye. He wore a suit which, though old, was of
excellently cut tweed, and his trousers were shoved into nailed
cruisers. His companion was younger, stout, round-faced and more
carefully dressed, but he, too, possessed a shrewd eye. Neither looked
like a rancher, and both were strangers to Angus. Between them rested an
instrument of some sort, hooded, which looked like a level.
"Nice ranch, this," said the driver, "Yours?"
"Yes."
"For sale?"
"Yes," Angus told him grimly.
"How much have you got here?" the second stranger asked. Angus told him.
"En bloc?"
"Yes."
"What do you hold it at?"
"I don't hold it at anything. It will be sold to-morrow by public sale
under a mortgage."
The two men exchanged glances and eyed Angus with curiosity.
"Who holds the mortgage?" the younger man asked.
"Isaac J. Braden."
"Braden, hey! Isn't that the fellow--" He spoke swiftly in an undertone
to his companion, who nodded. "We've heard of him. Local big bug, isn't
he? What's the amount against the property?" He whistled when Angus told
him. "Why didn't you get a loan somewhere and pay him off?"
"Because I couldn't. Nobody would lend. The loan companies'
appraisers--well, they shied off."
"Braden fixed them, did he?" the other deduced. "Knocked the loan, hey?
Knocked you as a borrower! Shoved you to the wall. Thinks he'll bid the
place in. Anybody else want it? No--or you'd have made some deal."
"That's about the size of it," Angus admitted, surprised at the swift
accuracy of these deductions.
"Will it leave you stranded?"
"Nearly. Not quite."
"Folks depending on you?"
"Yes."
"Why don't you tell me to mind my own darn business?"
"I came near it," Angus admitted; "but you look as if you know enough to
do that without being told."
The stout man chuckled. "I think I do, myself. If I had known of this
place before I'd have made you some sort of an offer for it. As it is,
I'll go to that sale to-morrow. Good day. Drive on, Floyd."
Angus watched them drive away and turned back to the house. It seemed
that Braden might have opposition, and apart from financial reasons he
was glad of it. The strangers did not look like ranchers. Speculators,
likely. Anyway, it had not taken the stout fellow long to size Braden
up. But if he could have overheard the conversation between the two
strangers as they drove away he would have been more surprised at the
accuracy of their mental workings.
"Things like that," the man called Floyd observed jerking his head
backward, "always get my goat. I'll bet that young fellow's got the raw
end of some dirty deal. He's taking a bitter dose of medicine. You can
see it in his face."
"And I can make a pretty fair guess what it is," the other responded.
"This fellow Braden has been trying to get information about our
construction plans. He hinted that he had some sort of a townsite
proposition to make to us, and if that place back there is it I give him
credit for a good eye. He doesn't seem to have been very particular
about how he went to work to get hold of it himself."
"What are you going to do about it, Mac?"
"What I should do," the other replied, frowning thoughtfully, "is to
make a dicker with Braden to take over the land at a reasonable profit,
after he had bid it in for the amount of his dinky mortgage. That's my
plain duty to my employers, the Northern Airline, Mountain Section, for
which they pay me a salary, large it is true, but small in comparison
with my talents."
Floyd grinned. "Yes, I know you _should_ do that. But what _are_ you
going to do?"
"Well," the man called Mac admitted, "I do hate to see a shark get away
with anything but the hook. Besides, it looks to me as if Braden, if he
got hold of the property would try to double-cross us. I'll bet he'd
hold us up for some fancy price. So it's my duty to see he doesn't get a
chance. The property is just about what we want. There's room for a
good, little town. With that creek, a natural gravity water system could
be put in. No trouble about drainage. You can get power, too. A
subsidiary company formed to handle that end would pay well in a few
years when the place got going. Ah, it's a bird of a proposition--too
good to take any chances on."
"That's your end," Floyd nodded. "We go ahead and find the grades and
put 'em in, and you fat office guys come along and clean up. Well,
Healey's notes are all right so far. Easy construction through here.
I'll send young Davis in right away and let him run a trial line east,
for Broderick to tie into."
"Don't be in a hurry," the other responded. "Trouble with you roughneck
engineers, you think all there is to a railroad is building it. You wait
till I pick up what I want. I could fix it with Braden, but he'd get the
profit, and that young fellow back there would go broke, as he said. I
think I'll try to fix it so _he_ gets the profit. I'll just bid the
place in over Braden, and the young fellow will get any surplus over the
mortgage claim. It will be just as cheap for us."
"And the trouble with you," said the chief of Northern Airline
construction to its chief right-of-way and natural resources man, "is
that you're mushy about men in hard luck. I know some corporations you
wouldn't last with as long as a pint of red-eye in a Swede rock gang."
"You're such a hard-hearted guy yourself!" sneered Mac, his round face
reddening perceptibly. "No bowels of compassion. Practical man! Dam'
hypocrite! Yah! you make me sick!"
Mr. Floyd also reddened perceptibly. "Oh, well, I've been in hard luck
myself," he said.
"So've I," his friend admitted. "I know what the gaff feels like.
Well--stir up those horses. We've got a long way to go."