CHAPTER XXX
STRANGERS ASK QUESTIONS
When Faith and Angus got back to the ranch Godfrey French's funeral wasover. 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 particularill-feeling toward Godfrey French, but as French had held it toward himhe thought it best to stay away. When Faith had gone he pottered aboutthe house, stables and sheds, taking an inventory, estimating the valueof the things he could sell, deciding where they could be sold to thebest advantage. There were the tools, implements, rigs, cut crops,horses and stock on the range. He jotted down a rough estimate andfrowned 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. 'Thebest-laid schemes of mice and men' and all that sort of thing. Let'stalk 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 atthe 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 ahomestead." Angus shook his head. "You don't like the idea? No more doI. I shan't do it."
"Have you any idea what you will do? I gathered that you lost what moneyyou 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 allright some day. One thing I'll promise you, old man, I won't marry Jeantill I have something definite to go on."
"Good boy!" Angus approved. "That's sense. I'm going to look up a bunchof land in one of the new districts. When I find what I want Jean willcome and live with us, of course. Then we might make somearrangement--if you want to buck the ranching game."
When Chetwood had gone, presumably to find Jean, Angus was restless. Heliked Chetwood, but the Lord alone knew when the latter would be inshape to support a wife unless somebody helped him. He would have to dothat. The fancy took him to walk around the ranch for a last look asowner. As he walked a hundred recollections crowded upon him. Here therehad been a good crop in one year; there a failure in another. Here wasthe place where he had first held the handles of a plow. This was wherea team had run away with a mower. He arrived at the gate and lookedback over the fields. To-day they were his; to-morrow in all likelihoodthey would belong to Braden.
Looking up the road he saw a light rig with two men. One of them wasstanding up in it, apparently surveying his surroundings through a pairof field glasses. Presently he sat down and the team came on. By thegate the driver pulled up and nodded.
"Afternoon!" he said. He was a thickset, deeply tanned man of middleage, with a shrewd, blue eye. He wore a suit which, though old, was ofexcellently cut tweed, and his trousers were shoved into nailedcruisers. His companion was younger, stout, round-faced and morecarefully dressed, but he, too, possessed a shrewd eye. Neither lookedlike a rancher, and both were strangers to Angus. Between them rested aninstrument 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 saleunder 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 undertoneto his companion, who nodded. "We've heard of him. Local big bug, isn'the? What's the amount against the property?" He whistled when Angus toldhim. "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 theplace 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 swiftaccuracy 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 todo that without being told."
The stout man chuckled. "I think I do, myself. If I had known of thisplace 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 seemedthat Braden might have opposition, and apart from financial reasons hewas glad of it. The strangers did not look like ranchers. Speculators,likely. Anyway, it had not taken the stout fellow long to size Bradenup. But if he could have overheard the conversation between the twostrangers as they drove away he would have been more surprised at theaccuracy of their mental workings.
"Things like that," the man called Floyd observed jerking his headbackward, "always get my goat. I'll bet that young fellow's got the rawend of some dirty deal. He's taking a bitter dose of medicine. You cansee 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 ourconstruction plans. He hinted that he had some sort of a townsiteproposition to make to us, and if that place back there is it I give himcredit for a good eye. He doesn't seem to have been very particularabout 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 tomake 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 myplain duty to my employers, the Northern Airline, Mountain Section, forwhich they pay me a salary, large it is true, but small in comparisonwith my talents."
Floyd grinned. "Yes, I know you _should_ do that. But what _are_ yougoing to do?"
"Well," the man called Mac admitted, "I do hate to see a shark get awaywith anything but the hook. Besides, it looks to me as if Braden, if hegot hold of the property would try to double-cross us. I'll bet he'dhold us up for some fancy price. So it's my duty to see he doesn't get achance. The property is just about what we want. There's room for agood, little town. With that creek, a natural gravity water system couldbe put in. No trouble about drainage. You can get power, too. Asubsidiary company formed to handle that end would pay well in a fewyears when the place got going. Ah, it's a bird of a proposition--toogood to take any chances on."
"That's your end," Floyd nodded. "We go ahead and find the grades andput '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 roughneckengineers, you think all there is to a railroad is building it. You waittill I pick up what I want. I could fix it wi
th Braden, but he'd get theprofit, and that young fellow back there would go broke, as he said. Ithink I'll try to fix it so _he_ gets the profit. I'll just bid theplace in over Braden, and the young fellow will get any surplus over themortgage claim. It will be just as cheap for us."
"And the trouble with you," said the chief of Northern Airlineconstruction to its chief right-of-way and natural resources man, "isthat you're mushy about men in hard luck. I know some corporations youwouldn'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 facereddening 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 luckmyself," 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."