I
Before the members of the Sagamore Fish and Game Association had erected
their handsome club-house, and before they had begun to purchase those
thousands of acres of forest, mountain, and stream which now belonged to
them, a speculative lumberman with no capital, named O'Hara, built the
white house across the river on a few acres of inherited property,
settled himself comfortably with his wife and child, and prepared to
acquire all the timber in sight at a few dollars an acre ... on credit.
For thus, thought he, is the beginning of all millionaires.
So certain was O'Hara of ultimately cornering the standing timber that
he took his time about it, never dreaming that a rival might disturb him
in the wilderness of Sagamore County.
He began in the woodland which he had inherited, which ran for a mile on
either side of the river. This he leisurely cut, hired a few river
drivers, ran a few logs to Foxville, and made money.
Now he was ready to extend business on a greater scale; but when he came
to open negotiations with the score or more of landholders, he found
himself in the alarming position of a bidder against an unknown but
clever rival, who watched, waited, and quietly forestalled his every
movement.
It took a long time for O'Hara to discover that he was fighting a
combination of fifteen wealthy gentlemen from New York. Finally, when
the Sagamore Club, limited to fifteen, had completed operations, O'Hara
suddenly perceived that he was bottled up in the strip of worthless land
which he had inherited, surrounded by thousands of acres of preserved
property--outwitted, powerless, completely hemmed in. And that, too,
with the best log-driving water betwixt Foxville and Canada washing the
very door-sill of his own home.
At first he naturally offered to sell, but the club's small offer
enraged him, and he swore that he would never sell them an inch of his
land. He watched the new club-house which was slowly taking shape under
the trowels of masons and the mallets of carpenters; and his wrath grew
as grew the house.
The man's nature began to change; an inextinguishable hatred for these
people took possession of him, became his mania, his existence.
His wife died; he sent his child to a convent school in Canada and
remained to watch. He did the club what damage he could, posting his
property, and as much of the river as he controlled. But he could not
legally prevent fishermen from wading the stream and fishing; so he
filled the waters with sawdust, logs, barbed-wire, brambles, and brush,
choking it so that no living creature, except perhaps a mink, could
catch a fish in it.
The club protested, and then offered to buy the land on O'Hara's own
terms. O'Hara cursed them and built a dam without a fishway, and sat
beside it nights with a loaded shot-gun.
He still had a few dollars left; he wanted millions to crush these rich
men who had come here to mock him and take the bread out of his mouth
for their summer's sport.
He had a shrewd young friend in New York, named Amasa Munn. Through this
man, O'Hara began to speculate in every wild-cat scheme that squalled
aloud for public support; and between Munn and the wild-cats his little
fortune spread its wings of gold and soared away, leaving him a wreck on
his wrecked land.
But he could still find strength to watch the spite dam with his
shot-gun. One day a better scheme came into his unbalanced brain; he
broke the dam and sent for Munn. Between them they laid a plan to ruin
forever the trout-fishing in the Sagamore; and Munn, taking the last of
O'Hara's money as a bribe, actually secured several barrels full of live
pickerel, and shipped them to the nearest station on the Sagamore and
Inland Railway.
But here the club watchers caught Munn, and held him and his fish for
the game-wardens. The penalty for introducing trout-destroying pickerel
into waters inhabited by trout was a heavy fine. Munn was guilty only in
intent, but the club keepers swore falsely, and Peyster Sprowl, a lawyer
and also the new president of the Sagamore Club, pushed the case; and
Munn went to jail, having no money left to purge his sentence.
O'Hara, wild with rage, wrote, threatening Sprowl.
Then Sprowl did a vindictive and therefore foolish thing: he swore out
a warrant for O'Hara's arrest, charging him with blackmail.
The case was tried in Foxville, and O'Hara was acquitted. But a chance
word or two during the testimony frightened the club and gave O'Hara the
opportunity of his life. He went to New York and scraped up enough money
for his purpose, which was to search the titles of the lands controlled
by the Sagamore Club.
He worked secretly, grubbing, saving, starving; he ferreted out the
original grants covering nine-tenths of Sagamore County; he disinterred
the O'Hara patent of 1760; and then he began to understand that his
title to the entire Sagamore Club property was worth the services, on
spec, of any first-class Centre Street shyster.
The club got wind of this and appointed Peyster Sprowl, in his capacity
of lawyer and president of the club, to find out how much of a claim
O'Hara really had. The club also placed the emergency fund of one
hundred thousand dollars at Sprowl's command with _carte-blanche_ orders
to arrest a suit and satisfy any claim that could not be beaten by money
and talent.
Now it took Sprowl a very short time to discover that O'Hara's claim was
probably valid enough to oust the club from three-quarters of its
present holdings.
He tried to see O'Hara, but the lumberman refused to be interviewed, and
promptly began proceedings. He also made his will; for he was a sick
man. Then he became a sicker man, and suspended proceedings and sent for
his little daughter.
Before she arrived he called Munn in, gave him a packet of papers, and
made him burn them before his eyes.
"They're the papers in my case," he said. "I'm dying; I've fought too
hard. I don't want my child to fight when I'm dead. And there's nothing
in my claim, anyway." This was a lie, and Munn suspected it.
When the child, Eileen, arrived, O'Hara was nearly dead, but he gathered
sufficient strength to shove a locked steel box towards his daughter and
tell her to keep it from Munn, and keep it locked until she found an
honest man in the world.
The next morning O'Hara appeared to be much better. His friend Munn came
to see him; also came Peyster Sprowl in some alarm, on the matter of the
proceedings threatened. But O'Hara turned his back on them both and
calmly closed his eyes and ears to their presence.
Munn went out of the room, but laid his large, thin ear against the
door. Sprowl worried O'Hara for an hour, but, getting no reply from the
man in the bed, withdrew at last with considerable violence.
O'Hara, however, had fooled them both: he had been dead all the while.
The day after the funeral, Sprowl came back to look for O'Hara's
daughter; and as he peeped into the door of the squalid flat he saw a
thin, yellow-eyed young man, with a bony face, all furry in promise of
future whiskers, rummaging through O'Hara's effects. This young
gentleman was Munn.
In a dark corner of the disordered room sat the child, Eileen, a white,
shadowy elf of six, reading in the Book of Common Prayer.
Sprowl entered the room; Munn looked up, then coolly continued to
rummage.
Sprowl first addressed himself to the child, in a heavy, patronizing
voice:
"It's too dark to read there in that corner, young one. Take your book
out into the hall."
"I can see better to read in the dark," said the child, lifting her
great, dark-blue eyes.
"Go out into the hall," said Sprowl, sharply.
The child shrank back, and went, taking her little jacket in one hand,
her battered travelling-satchel in the other.
If the two men could have known that the steel box was in that satchel
this story might never have been told. But it never entered their heads
that the pallid little waif had sense enough to conceal a button to her
own profit.
"Munn," said Sprowl, lighting a cigar, "what is there in this business?"
"I'll tell you when I'm done," observed Munn, coolly.
Sprowl sat down on the bed where O'Hara had died, cocked the cigar up in
his mouth, and blew smoke, musingly, at the ceiling.
Munn found nothing--not a scrap of paper, not a line. This staggered
him, but he did not intend that Sprowl should know it.
"Found what you want?" asked Sprowl, comfortably.
"Yes," replied Munn.
"Belong to the kid?"
"Yes; I'm her guardian."
The men measured each other in silence for a minute.
"What will you take to keep quiet?" asked Sprowl. "I'll give you a
thousand dollars."
"I want five thousand," said Munn, firmly.
"I'll double it for the papers," said Sprowl.
Munn waited. "There's not a paper left," he said; "O'Hara made me burn
'em."
"Twenty thousand for the papers," said Sprowl, calmly.
"My God, Mr. Sprowl!" growled Munn, white and sweating with anguish.
"I'd give them to you for half that if I had them. Can't you believe me?
I saw O'Hara burn them."
"What were you rummaging for, then?" demanded Sprowl.
"For anything--to get a hold on you," said Munn, sullenly.
"Blackmail?"
Munn was silent.
"Oh," said Sprowl, lazily. "I think I'll be going, then--"
Munn barred his exit, choking with anger.
"You give me five thousand dollars, or I'll stir 'em up to look into
your titles!" he snarled.
Sprowl regarded him with contempt; then another idea struck him, an idea
that turned his fat face first to ashes, then to fire.
A month later Sprowl returned to the Sagamore Club, triumphant,
good-humored, and exceedingly contented. But he had, he explained, only
succeeded in saving the club at the cost of the entire emergency
fund--one hundred thousand dollars--which, after all, was a drop in the
bucket to the remaining fourteen members.
The victory would have been complete if Sprowl had also been able to
purchase the square mile of land lately occupied by O'Hara. But this
belonged to O'Hara's daughter, and the child flatly refused to part with
it.
"You'll have to wait for the little slut to change her mind," observed
Munn to Sprowl. And, as there was nothing else to do, Sprowl and the
club waited.
Trouble appeared to be over for the Sagamore Club. Munn disappeared; the
daughter was not to be found; the long-coveted land remained tenantless.
Of course, the Sagamore Club encountered the petty difficulties and
annoyances to which similar clubs are sooner or later subjected;
disputes with neighboring land-owners were gradually adjusted; troubles
arising from poachers, dishonest keepers, and night guards had been, and
continued to be, settled without harshness or rancor; minks, otters,
herons, kingfishers, and other undesirable intruders were kept within
limits by the guns of the watchers, although by no means exterminated;
and the wealthy club was steadily but unostentatiously making vast
additions to its splendid tracts of forest, hill, and river land.
After a decent interval the Sagamore Club made cautious inquiries
concerning the property of the late O'Hara, only to learn that the land
had been claimed by Munn, and that taxes were paid on it by that
individual.
For fifteen years the O'Hara house remained tenantless; anglers from the
club fished freely through the mile of river; the name of Munn had been
forgotten save by the club's treasurer, secretary, and president,
Peyster Sprowl.
However, the members of the club never forgot that in the centre of
their magnificent domain lay a square mile which did not belong to
them; and they longed to possess it as better people than they have
coveted treasures not laid up on earth.
The relations existing between the members of the Sagamore Club
continued harmonious in as far as their social intercourse and the
general acquisitive policy of the club was concerned.
There existed, of course, that tacit mutual derision based upon
individual sporting methods, individual preferences, obstinate theories
concerning the choice of rods, reels, lines, and the killing properties
of favorite trout-flies.
Major Brent and Colonel Hyssop continued to nag and sneer at each other
all day long, yet they remained as mutually dependent upon each other as
David and Jonathan. For thirty years the old gentlemen had angled in
company, and gathered inspiration out of the same books, the same
surroundings, the same flask.
They were the only guests at the club-house that wet May in 1900,
although Peyster Sprowl was expected in June, and young Dr. Lansing had
wired that he might arrive any day.
An evening rain-storm was drenching the leaded panes in the
smoking-room; Colonel Hyssop drummed accompaniment on the windows and
smoked sulkily, looking across the river towards the O'Hara house, just
visible through the pelting downpour.
"Irritates me every time I see it," he said.
"Some day," observed Major Brent, comfortably, "I'm going to astonish
you all."
"How?" demanded the Colonel, tersely.
The Major examined the end of his cigarette with a cunning smile.
"It isn't for sale, is it?" asked the Colonel. "Don't try to be
mysterious; it irritates me."
Major Brent savored his cigarette leisurely.
"Can you keep a secret?" he inquired.
The Colonel intimated profanely that he could.
"Well, then," said the Major, in calm triumph, "there's a tax sale on
to-morrow at Foxville."
"Not the O'Hara place?" asked the Colonel, excited.
The Major winked. "I'll fix it," he said, with a patronizing squint at
his empty glass.
But he did not "fix it" exactly as he intended; the taxes on the O'Hara
place were being paid at that very moment.
He found it out next day, when he drove over to Foxville; he also
learned that the Rev. Amasa Munn, Prophet of the Shining Band Community,
had paid the taxes and was preparing to quit Maine and re-establish his
colony of fanatics on the O'Hara land, in the very centre and heart of
the wealthiest and most rigidly exclusive country club in America.
That night the frightened Major telegraphed to Munnville, Maine, an
offer to buy the O'Hara place at double its real value. The
business-like message ended: "Wire reply at my expense."
The next morning an incoherent reply came by wire, at the Major's
expense, refusing to sell, and quoting several passages of Scripture at
Western Union rates per word.
The operator at the station counted the words carefully, and collected
eight dollars and fourteen cents from the Major, whose fury deprived
him of speech.
Colonel Hyssop awaited his comrade at the club-house, nervously pacing
the long veranda, gnawing his cigar. "Hello!" he called out, as Major
Brent waddled up. "Have you bought the O'Hara place for us?"
The Major made no attempt to reply; he panted violently at the Colonel,
then began to run about, taking little, short, distracted steps.
"Made a mess of it?" inquired the Colonel, with a badly concealed sneer.
He eyed the Major in deepening displeasure. "If you get any redder in
the face you'll blow up," he said, coldly; "and I don't propose to have
you spatter me."
"He--he's an impudent swindler!" hissed the Major, convulsively.
The Colonel sniffed: "I expected it. What of it? After all, there's
nobody on the farm to annoy us, is there?"
"Wait!" groaned the Major--"wait!" and he toddled into the hall and fell
on a chair, beating space with his pudgy hands.
When the Colonel at length learned the nature of the threatened
calamity, he utterly refused to credit it.
"Rubbish!" he said, calmly--"rubbish! my dear fellow; this man Munn is
holding out for more money, d'ye see? Rubbish! rubbish! It's blackmail,
d'ye see?"
"Do you think so?" faltered the Major, hopefully. "It isn't possible
that they mean to come, is it? Fancy all those fanatics shouting about
under our windows--"
"Rubbish!" said the Colonel, calmly. "I'll write to the fellow myself."
All through that rainy month of May the two old cronies had the
club-house to themselves; they slopped about together, fishing cheek by
jowl as they had fished for thirty years; at night they sat late over
their toddy, and disputed and bickered and wagged their fingers at each
other, and went to bed with the perfect gravity of gentlemen who could
hold their own with any toddy ever brewed.
No reply came to the Colonel, but that did not discourage him.
"They are playing a waiting game," he said, sagely. "This man Munn has
bought the land from O'Hara's daughter for a song, and he means to bleed
us. I'll write to Sprowl; he'll fix things."
Early in June Dr. Lansing and his young kinsman, De Witt Coursay,
arrived at the club-house. They, also, were of the opinion that Munn's
object was to squeeze the club by threats.
The second week in June, Peyster Sprowl, Master of Fox-hounds,
Shadowbrook, appeared with his wife, the celebrated beauty, Agatha
Sprowl, _nee_ Van Guilder.
Sprowl, now immensely large and fat, had few cares in life beyond an
anxious apprehension concerning the durability of his own digestion.
However, he was still able to make a midnight mouthful of a Welsh
rarebit on a hot mince-pie, and wash it down with a quart of champagne,
and so the world went very well with him, even if it wabbled a trifle
for his handsome wife.
"She's lovely enough," said Colonel Hyssop, gallantly, "to set every
star in heaven wabbling." To which the bull-necked Major assented with
an ever-hopeless attempt to bend at the waistband.
Meanwhile the Rev. Amasa Munn and his flock, the Shining Band, arrived
at Foxville in six farm wagons, singing "Roll, Jordan!"
Of their arrival Sprowl was totally unconscious, the Colonel having
forgotten to inform him of the threatened invasion.