SHANDON'S GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY
Wayne Shandon had grown more silent, more thoughtful than men had ever
known him. The two things which had come to him, one as unheralded as
the other, the gladness of a deep love, the bitterness which grew out
of Martin Leland's words, he kept to himself. He rode far and alone,
seeing very little of the men of the Bar L-M or of Garth, to whom he
still left the routine of the range, and who made the most of small
pretexts to keep up of Wayne's way. Shandon wanted time to think
coolly and deliberately for the first time in his life; he wanted time
to look inward as well as at what lay without, to cast up the balance
of what sums of good and bad were in his soul.
Until now he had been quite content with life as he found it. It had
afforded him infinite pleasure, it bubbled up sparklingly from the
fountain of contented youth, there had been no need for him to seek to
change its flashing current. Moreover, he had never had an incentive
to bestir himself. But that incentive had come now, a two-pronged
goad; he was compelled to look to himself, to his own positive effort,
for what came next.
Vaguely, at first, he realised that a man if he be a man, has certain
responsibilities. He saw clearly, now that he considered life
seriously, that a man might err in dalliance and idleness just as he
had erred; and he saw too that a man might, like Sledge Hume, go to the
other extreme. A man might grow soft muscled literally and
figuratively in slothful carelessness, or he might grow hard until he
became a machine. He felt dimly that he ought to be doing something
like other men. He wanted his life to live freely as he knew how,
largely as he sought to learn how. And he wanted Wanda.
At first he was like a sea-worthy ship, in a calm with no definite port
in sight. But, in due course, from the one vital fact of his love for
Wanda other facts materialised. To begin with he thought with
diminishing bitterness of old Martin Leland. The man was old, and he
loved his daughter. Rumours of a wild life fly incredibly high and far
and fast. Such rumours of Red Reckless's doings had come to Leland's
ears, and perhaps it was natural enough that Leland believed them.
Shandon had always known his neighbour as a hard man but a just. He
made up his mind not to quarrel with him, but instead to so change the
tenor of his life that Martin Leland would notice and would approve.
If in taking Wanda to her new home he closed her old one to her he
would be hurting her.
He saw clearly, there being little foolish conceit in the man's makeup,
that he was not worthy. And he understood, though vaguely at first,
that it must be his one object now to become as worthy as any man could
be of her. And when the fifth day came and Ruf Ettinger rode to the
Bar L-M with excitement dancing in his eyes and his tongue clacking,
Shandon thought that he saw a beginning.
Ruf Ettinger, a little dried up man of forty-five, was crabbed, cranky,
sour and mean. He had the eyes, nose and brain of a fox, while perhaps
the rest of him, heart and soul, came close to being just plain hog.
He was stingy and suspicious, and people were no more in the habit of
speaking well of him than they were of riding out of their way to stop
at his place. He was the kind of man that makes his wife and children
live in a miserable, two roomed shanty, while he builds a big, warm,
expensive barn for his hay and horses. The only time he was ever
credited with a human emotion was when his favourite dog died; he cried
over it and then got drunk, careless of cost.
Shandon was surprised when he saw Ettinger ride up. He was more
surprised at Ettinger's manner when he insisted on Shandon saddling and
riding with him where there "wouldn't be no chance of bein' overheard."
Once clear of the house and outbuildings and in the valley where his
shrewd little eyes made sure that no other ears than Shandon's would
overhear, Ettinger plunged eagerly into his errand.
In brief it was this: Ettinger owned five hundred acres of valley land,
down in Dry Valley, some thirty miles from the Bar L-M bunk house.
Shandon knew the place well. Ettinger had, also, some money in the
bank. How much it was not his cautious way to say until he was obliged
to. How much would Shandon say his ranch was worth? Shandon did not
know, but hazarded the guess that it might bring twenty-five dollars an
acre. He did not consider it worth more because it was good grazing
land only for part of the year, and like the rest of the valley there
was scant water on it through the summer. Twelve thousand five hundred
dollars?
Ettinger cackled; he could sell it to-morrow for seventy-five thousand!
Shandon began to feel the first dim stirrings of interest. Ettinger's
excitement was too genuine not to awaken certain glimmerings of
interest. Water, that was the thing! Now, if there were water, plenty
of water, in Dry Valley; if a man could flood his land from brimming
ditches then what would happen? The soil was deep and rich; it had
been slipping down from the mountains for centuries; it had never been
worn out by farming. Twenty-five dollars an acre? What were the other
California valley lands worth where there was the same soil, no better
climate and water galore? Napa Valley, Santa Clara Valley, Sacramento
Valley? A hundred dollars an acre was dirt cheap; a man thought
nothing of paying for a small ranch five hundred dollars an acre!
That was true enough, and Shandon knew it. But there was that
tremendous IF.
"It's all right, Ettinger. All but the water! And since the water is
the whole thing, and I don't see where you're going to get it--"
"Wait a minute!" cried Ettinger, his eager hand clutching at Shandon's
arm. "I tell you I'd a sold that ranch for twenty-five dollars an acre
six months ago an' been damn' glad to git out at that. An' right now I
could sell for a hundred an' fifty the acre! An' I'm damned if I do
it! My nose smells somethin' when a man wants that place that bad, an'
I git busy follerin' the smell. If I ever sell at less than two
hundred dollars I'm gone crazy."
His excitement growing as the vision of much gold became clearer, he
ran on with hasty explanations. He had five hundred acres; Norfolk had
close to a thousand and he had made Norfolk begin to think for the
first time in his life. He himself had a little money in the bank and
Norfolk had some. There were other men, little ranchers, whom they
could whip into line. _And Wayne Shandon had the water!_
Shandon looked at him in amazement, thinking at first that the man was
a little mad. But Ettinger's shrewd eyes were sane enough.
"We go right up to your lake," he cried shrilly. "We git busy with
some engineers an' pick an' shovel men. We blow the side of a hill all
to hell an' what happens? The water just comes a bulgin' down into Dry
Creek, an' all we got to do down in the valley, twenty, thirty miles
away, is dig ditches an' watch our land turn into a gold mine!"
In a flash Shandon saw the utter simplicity of the whole scheme.
Whereas now the river from Laughter Lake shot down the mountains
through its rocky gorge, watering his own land and running through
little narrow, rocky valleys to the lower slopes, it might here near
the head be deflected so that it sped at first through the cañon of the
upper Dry Creek, and following a natural course be brought with little
expense to Dry Valley. Ettinger's proposition was no fanciful dream;
it was hard, unvarnished fact. And, as so often happens when a man
sees a radiant possibility, he wondered that he had not seen it for
himself long ago.
Here was the golden opportunity his soul, in a mist, had yearned for!
He shot out his hand gripping Ruf Ettinger's until the little man
squirmed. But even the pain of nearly crushed fingers did not drive
the grin from Ettinger's face.
"You're on," he cried exultantly. "Shandon, we'll frame a deal that'll
make millionaires out of us."
"And man's work!" was the thought stirring Shandon's heart and
brightening his eyes.
They rode on, as Ettinger had planned from the beginning, and covered
the two miles to Laughter Lake in a few minutes. They rode up the
shoulder of the ridge to the level of the lake; and there Ruf
Ettinger's eager finger pointed out where the work was to be done.
It was work which Nature might have planned when the mountains were
carved, the lake set in its deep bowl. Fifteen feet from this end of
the lake the water swept into a narrow channel, a ridge running down
from each side. Here was the spot to deflect the waters before they
sped on down over the steep fall. Upon the south side there was a
jagged cut in the saw-toothed cliff line. Even now the lowest part of
that cut, when once the free soil was scooped out, was not ten feet
above the level of the water.
"I rode up here purt' near a week ago," said Ettinger. "I looked this
over an' rode back all the way down Dry Creek. It's dead easy,
Shandon."
Already Ettinger visualised the cut deepened and widened here with
flood gates to control the current. He spurred his horse up the bank
as far as he could force the animal, then got down and scrambled on,
gesticulating and talking swiftly. Shandon followed him. In a little
they came to a point from which they could look back upon the lake, and
forward to the windings of the cañon through which Dry Creek ran in
winter and spring.
"It can be done," muttered Shandon slowly. "It can be done, Ettinger.
I don't know what it will cost, five thousand or ten or twenty; but I
do know that those lands down in Dry Valley are going to jump over the
moon."
Ettinger made little clucking sounds with his mouth, his way of
expressing joy unbounded.
"An' you don't see it all yet," he chuckled. "Lord, I've been layin'
awake nights figgerin' on it. We'll bond everything that's loose in
the valley. I've got Norfolk settin' tight and we'll round up a lot of
the little fellers. It's sort of late, maybe, but them other fellers
ain't got everything sewed up by a jugful."
"What other fellows?" asked Shandon, mystified.
Then Ettinger, in his rare good humour loosened his tongue until it
poured out everything there was in his seething brain. He told of the
scheme of Martin Leland and Sledge Hume, for Garth Conway had dropped
an incautious word and the shrewd brain of Ettinger had worked out the
puzzle. He told how the three men were trying to do this very thing,
how they had planned on getting the water themselves, how Martin Leland
had tied up thousands in options and purchases, how Ettinger had been
one too many for them and had beat them to Shandon. He chuckled over
everything, but most of all over the fact that Martin Leland had tried
to buy him out. Old Leland was the keenest business man in the county,
was he? Well, Ettinger had fooled him! Ettinger had blinded him with
a promise to sell next week for seventy-five thousand. By that time,
when Leland came to him--
"What's all this?" frowned Shandon. "You say that Leland, Conway and
Hume are already at work, planning to put water from the Bar L-M into
Dry Valley?"
"Already?" cried Ettinger. "They been clawin' at the job over a year
now. The Lord knows what makes 'em so slow; think nobody else in the
world can see straight, or shy on the money end, maybe. Anyhow they've
gone to it tooth and toe nail; they've sunk thousands into it,
thousands I tell you! An' now, you an' me, Shandon, can make the bunch
of 'em eat out of our hands! They can't do nothin' without your water;
that's where we got 'em."
Wayne Shandon's eyes grew bright with a vision, the muscles of his jaw
hardened. In sober truth his opportunity had come to him. Hume, a man
he hated, Leland, a man who had called him laggard, spendthrift,
scoundrel, had put many thousands of dollars into a project which he
could smash into pieces. Ettinger had said it: the two of them could
make Leland and Hume eat out of their hands! They could get Norfolk
and the little fellows; they could tear out the side of the ridge,
release what waters they chose, make their ditches, and by improving
only their own property make Leland's and Hume's holdings worth
nothing. Leland had started it; Leland's unreasonable censure had been
a challenge. Here was his answer!
It was business, straight business. Had Leland and Hume been his
friends it would have been different. But they deserved no
consideration from him. It was his water; he had the right to dispose
of it as he saw fit. He would be treating Leland as fairly as he had
been treated. Why had they not come to him in the first place? Why
had they not offered him the opportunity to get in on the ground floor
with them? He would have given them the water then, glad to see
Wanda's father prospering. But they were holding out, they were
waiting for something, they had made sure of his consent to let them
have what they wanted. Why? When they had everything cornered they
would offer him a small sum, they would believe him fool enough to leap
at it, mouth open, like a fish. Even Garth Conway, his own cousin, had
not told him! What consideration did Conway deserve?
"By Heaven!" cried Shandon.
And then he fell suddenly silent.
"We got to git busy in a hurry, Shandon," Ettinger ran on swiftly.
"When old Sure-Thing Leland comes to me to close the deal I want to
laugh at him."
Slowly the light died out of Shandon's eyes. Was this, after all, the
opportunity for which he had yearned? He grew uncertain, a little
troubled. An opportunity for what? For becoming worthy of Wanda, for
being a man, square and just, a man who must make a new name for
himself, a name which would never bring discredit to her when she
became Wanda Shandon? In trying to ruin Sledge Hume for the sordid
motives of hatred and gain, in trying to strike back at Wanda's father
in vengeful bitterness, would he be doing a thing of which later he
would be proud to have her know? Was he proving his manhood by
accepting for his first business partner a man like Ettinger, who
laughed over his feat of tricking another man by a lie? Was he not
seeking to blind himself to the right and the wrong of it? This was
the sort of thing that Sledge Hume would do; should Wayne Shandon do
it? Was his first venture after the priceless gift of Wanda's love to
him, to be a thing like this? Had this been the opportunity he had
yearned for, to grasp gold full handed, to wreak vengeance, to
retaliate against unfair treatment by striking back treacherously?
Martin Leland had been unjust, yes. But had there not been strong
human reasons for that injustice? Had not his own wild living been
cause enough? Was he, from the sharp words of an old man who was
jealous in his love for his daughter, to draw an excuse to strike at
his own cousin and Wanda's father?
"Ettinger," he said quietly. "I can't do it. You had better keep your
promise to Leland."
Ettinger's jaw dropped, his brows puckered in astonishment.
"What's the matter with you?" he demanded sharply. "Can't you see the
play? We got the chance to git the water on the land and make them
fellers pay for it or sell to us at our own figger, ain't we? Why,
it's as good as gold, man! If you don't see enough in it as it stands
you are in a place where you can hold 'em up for a bonus to boot."
Shandon turned away, Ettinger's point of view suddenly disgusting him.
His golden opportunity had crumbled into dust and ashes. And although
the little man by his side waxed voluble in alternating rage and
supplication, Wayne Shandon's final word was a positive,
"No!"