The Cattle-Baron's Daughter Part 20

"I guess you are--any way, if you go on as you're doing. You see what I consider it prudent to write off the value of your property?"

Clavering examined the paper handed him with visible astonishment. "Why have you whittled so much off the face value?"

"Just because you're going to have that much taken away from you by and by."

Clavering's laugh was quietly scornful. "By the homestead-boys?"

"By the legislature of this State. The law is against you holding what you're doing now."

"We make what law there is out here."

"Well," said Hopkins, coolly, "I guess you're not going to do it long. You know the maxim about fooling the people. It can't be done."

"Aren't you talking like one of those German socialists?"

"On the contrary. I quite fancy I'm talking like a business man. Now, you want to realize on those cattle before the winter takes the flesh off them, and extinguish the bank loan with what you get for them."

Clavering's face darkened. "That would strip the place, and I'd have to borrow to stock again."

"You'd have to run a light stock for a year or two."

"It wouldn't suit me to do anything that would proclaim my poverty just now," said Clavering.

"Then you'll have to do it by and by. The interest on the bond is crippling you."

"Well." Clavering lighted another cigar. "I told you to be straight. Go right on. Tell me just what you would do if the place was in your hands."

"Sell out those cattle and take the big loan up. Clear off the imported horses and pedigree brood mares. You have been losing more dollars than many a small rancher makes over them the last few years."

"I like good horses round the place," Clavering said languidly.

"The trouble," said Hopkins, "is that you can't afford to have them. Then, I would cut down my personal expenses by at least two-thirds. The ranch can't stand them. Do you know what you have been spending in the cities?"

"No. I gave you a bundle of bills so you could find it out."

Hopkins' smile was almost contemptuous. "I guess you had better burn them when I am through. I'll mention one or two items. One hundred dollars for flowers; one thousand in several bills from Chicago jewellers! The articles would count as an a.s.set. Have you got them?"

"I haven't," said Clavering. "They were for a lady."

"Well," said Hopkins, "you know best; but one would have fancied there was more than one of them from the bills. Here's another somewhat curious item: hats--I guess they came from Paris--and millinery, two hundred dollars' worth of them!"

A little angry light crept into Clavering's eyes. "If I hadn't been so abominably careless you wouldn't have seen those bills. I meant to put them down as miscellaneous and destroy the papers. Well, I've done with that extravagance, any way, and it's to hear the truth I'm paying you quite a big fee. If I go on just as I'm doing, how long would you give me?"

"Two years. Then the bank will put the screw on you. The legislature may pull you up earlier, but I can tell you more when I've squared up to-morrow."

There was a curious look in Clavering's dark eyes, but he laughed again.

"I guess that's about enough. But I'll leave you to it now," he said.

"It's quite likely I'll have got out of the difficulty before one of those years is over."

He went out, and a few minutes later stopped as he pa.s.sed the one big mirror in the ranch, and surveyed himself critically for a moment with a dispa.s.sionate interest that was removed from vanity. Then he nodded as if contented.

"With Torrance to back me it might be done," he said. "Liberty is sweet, but I don't know that it's worth at least fifty thousand dollars!"

XII

THE SPROUTING OF THE SEED

Late in the afternoon of a bitter day Grant drove into sight of the last of the homesteaders' dwellings that lay within his round. It rose, a shapeless mound of white, from the wilderness that rolled away in billowy rises, shining under the sunlight that had no warmth in it. The snow that lay deep about its sod walls and upon the birch-branch roof hid its squalidness, and covered the pile of refuse and empty cans, but Grant knew what he would find within it, and when he pulled up his team his face grew anxious. It was graver than it had been a year ago, for Larry Grant had lost a good deal of his hopefulness since he heard those footsteps at the depot.

The iron winter, that was but lightly felt in the homes of the cattle-barons, had borne hardly on the men huddled in sod-hovel, and birch-log shanty, swept by the winds of heaven at fifty degrees below.

They had no thick furs to shelter them, and many had very little food, while on those who came from the cities the cold of the Northwest set its mark, numbing the half-fed body and unhinging the mind. The lean farmers from the Dakotas who had fought with adverse seasons, and the sinewy axe-men from Michigan clearings, bore it with grim patience, but there were here and there a few who failed to stand the strain, and, listening to the outcasts from the East, let pa.s.sion drive out fort.i.tude and dreamed of anarchy. They had come in with a pitiful handful of dollars to build new homes and farm, but the rich men, and in some cases their own supineness, had been too strong for them; and while they waited their scanty capital melted away. Now, with most of them it had almost gone, and they were left without the means to commence the fight in spring.

Breckenridge saw the shadow in Grant's face, and touched his arm. "I'll go in and give the man his dollars, Larry," he said. "You have had about as much worry as is good for you to-day."

Grant shook his head. "I've no use for shutting my eyes so I can't see a thing when I know it's there."

He stepped out of the sleigh and went into the shanty. The place had one room, and, though a stove stood in the midst of it and the snow that kept some of the frost out was piled to the windows, it was dank and chill.

Only a little dim light crept in, and it was a moment or two before Grant saw the man who sat idle by the stove with a clotted bandage round his leg. He was gaunt, and clad in jean patched with flour-bags, and his face showed haggard under his bronze. Behind him on a rude birch-branch couch covered with prairie hay a woman lay apparently asleep beneath a tattered fur coat.

"What's the matter with her?" Grant asked.

"I don't quite know. She got sick 'most two weeks ago, and talks of a pain that only leaves her when she's sleeping. One of the boys drove in to the railroad for the doctor, but he's busy down there. Any way, it would have taken him 'most a week to get here and back, and I guess he knew I hadn't the dollars to pay him with."

Grant recognized the hopeless evenness of the tone, but Breckenridge, who was younger, did not.

"But you can't let her lie here without help of any kind," he said.

"Well," said the man slowly, "what else can I do?"

Breckenridge could not tell him, and appealed to his comrade. "We have got to take this up, Larry. She looks ill."

Grant nodded. "I have friends down yonder who will send that doctor out,"

he said. "Here are your dollars from the fund. Ten of them this time."

The man handed him one of the bills back. "If you want me to take more than five you'll have to show your book," he said. "I've been finding out how you work these affairs, Larry."

Grant only laughed, but Breckenridge turned to the speaker with an a.s.sumption of severity that was almost ludicrous in his young face.

"Now, don't you make yourself a consumed a.s.s," he said. "You want those dollars considerably more than we do, and we've got quite a few of them doing nothing in the bank. That is, Larry has."

Grant's eyes twinkled. "It's no use, Breckenridge. I know the kind of man he is. I'm going to send Miss Muller here, and we'll come round and pound the foolishness out of you if you try to send back anything she brings with her. This place is as cold as an ice-store. What's the matter with your stove?"

"The stove's all right," and the man pointed to his leg. "The trouble is that I've very little wood. Axe slipped the last time I went chopping in the bluff, and the frost got into the cut. I couldn't make three miles on one leg, and pack a load of billets on my back."