The Long Chance Part 20

"Well, after your applications are pa.s.sed to patent, you will have to put up $780 more for each section, or $39,000 in all. Have you provided for this additional sum?"

"Why, no sir. I was going to ask you to lend it to me."

"Indeed! Well, a.s.sume that I'm that soft-headed, Bobby, and proceed to proposition Number Three."

"Well, under the law, my applications must be acted upon within six months after filing. The surveyor-general must approve or disapprove them within six months, and if he approves them--"

"Which he will not" promptly interjected Dunstan.

"I'll sue him and make him. Well, when the applications are sent on to the Commissioner of the General Land Office at Washington for his ratification of the exchange of the lieu lands, they may be hung up there a long time--years, perhaps--"

"Certainly. The land ring will see to that."

"Then, don't you see, Mr. Dunstan" said Bob, brightening, "I'll have lots of time to get that balance of $39,000 together."

"I'm so glad" said Homer Dunstan. "Then I won't have to lend you the money after all. Well, when you're an old man, Bobby, and that red head of yours is snowy white, your lands will be pa.s.sed to patent and--"

"But the peculiar thing about this operation, Mr. Dunstan, lies in the fact that the land ring will readily ascertain my financial condition, and that of my clients--"

"In which event, my dear boy, your lands will be rushed to patent right away, you will be notified that they are waiting for you to pay the balance due on them within, thirty days, and if at the end of thirty days you do not pay that $39,000, your applications lapse automatically and your initial payment will be forfeited to the state as liquidated damages."

"I fear that is just what will happen. That is why I want to know if you are prepared to lend me $39,000 to call their bluff. I will a.s.sign you a half interest in a certain water-right which I possess, as security for the advance. My water-right is worth millions."

"It will have to be, if I am to consider your suggestion seriously. Get your fifty applications pa.s.sed to patent first, however. Then see me, and I'll lend you the money you require, provided I find upon investigation that the security is ample. Is your water-right developed?"

"No, sir. I've just filed on it."

Dunstan permitted himself a very thin smile. "You're your father's son, Bob. You see visions and you'll die poor. I am firmly convinced that you're honest, but as firmly convinced that you're chasing a will-o'-the-wisp--so I hold out very little hope for you in the matter of that loan."

"But my water-right is good for ten times the amount" pleaded Bob desperately, and produced T. Morgan Carey's letter to bolster up his argument. "All I need is money to develop it."

"And in the meantime it's worth ten cents. Bob, you weary me."

"I'm sorry, sir. You're the only human being in this world that I can come to for help; and I never ask help of any man, unless I can pay him well for his trouble, And I think I can pay you well--I know I can."

Dunstan eyed him more kindly. "Your father was a visionary, Bob, only he looked the part. You do not. I have difficulty in convincing myself that you're insane; but surely, Bob, you must admit that no sane man would seriously consider your proposition. Tell me how you expect to induce fifty paupers to apply for land for you, to do it in good faith and be within the law, and yet hand the land over to you. Dang it, boy, the thing's impossible. You can't do it."

"I can" replied Bob McGraw doggedly. "I can."

"All right then, you do it. Put that trick over, Bob, and I'll take off my hat to you."

"You may keep your hat on your head. I want $39,000."

"Do the impossible and I'll give it to you--without security."

"Taken" said Bob McGraw. "I'll hold you to that, Mr. Dunstan.

I'll simply round up fifty paupers, or their equivalent, with a const.i.tutional right to purchase state lieu land and permit me to pay for it for them. Then after I have secured the land for them I will buy it back from them--"

Homer Dunstan roared with laughter. He pointed a bony finger at Bob McGraw.

"Young man, the right to purchase state lieu land is a strictly personal one and it is unlawful for one person to purchase for another. Of course you can buy it back, Bob, but the attorney-general will have a leg-iron on you before the ink is dry on your check. Transfer of t.i.tle under such circ.u.mstances would be looked upon as bona-fide evidence of fraud, unless your clients could prove conclusively that they had parted with their lands for a valuable consideration--"

Bob McGraw in turn pointed _his_ finger at Dunstan. "Ah, that's the weak point in the law, Mr. Dunstan" he exulted. "A valuable consideration. I can beat that. I'll give my clients ten dollars per acre for lands which cost them one dollar and a quarter, and there isn't a lawyer in the land--yourself included--who wouldn't consider that a valuable consideration."

"McGraw," said Dunstan rising impatiently, "you're a consummate a.s.s!

Where the devil do you expect to get $320,000 to buy their land from them? I suppose you think I'll help you with that, also. Your stupidity annoys me, Robert. Damme, sir, you're light in the upper story."

Bob McGraw laughed aloud. "I won't need it. All I shall ever ask of you is that first $39,000. The water I have bottled up in the Sierra will make the land worth three hundred dollars an acre. Don't you see where I can afford to pay ten dollars per acre for it?"

"You can't do business on gab, McGraw. Money makes the mare go, and you cannot induce fifty men to waste their const.i.tutional right to lieu land on your bare word that your water-right will make a desert valuable.

You'll have to take 'em down there, at your own expense, and show 'em--"

"Old maids in New England buy stocks in wild-cat prospect holes in Nevada. Do the promoters have to bring them out to see the holes?"

"n.o.body but a fool or an idiot would listen to your crazy proposition, and fools and idiots are not qualified under the law to do anything except just live and try to avoid being run over by automobiles. But granted that you can do all these things, what are you going to do with your land when you get it?"

Bob McGraw stood up and leaned both brown hands on the edge of Homer Dunstan's desk. The genial mocking little smile was gone from his face now, for Dunstan's query had brought him back from the land of improbabilities into the realm of his most ardent day-dream. He raised his hand in unconscious imitation of every zealot that had preceded him down the ages; the light of the visionary who already sees the fulfillment of his dreams blazed in his big kind brown eyes.

"I'm going to give it to the lowly of the earth" he said. "I'm going to subdivide it into ten-acre farms, with a perpetual water-right with every farm. I'm going to build a town with a business block up each side of the main street. I'm going to install a hydro-electric plant that will carry a load of juice sufficient to light a city of a million inhabitants. I'm going to reclaim the desert and make it beautiful, and I'm going to have free light and free fuel and free local telephone service and free water and, by G.o.d! free people to live in my free country. I'm going to gather up a few thousand of the lowly and the hopeless in the sweat-shops of the big cities and bring them back to the land! Back to _my_ land and _my_ water that I'm going to hold in trust for them, the poor devils! Back where there won't be any poverty--where ten acres of Inyo desert with Inyo water on it will mean a fortune to every poor family I plant in my desert."

"Why?" demanded Homer Dunstan smiling.

"Why?" Bob McGraw echoed the attorney's query. He gazed at Dunstan stupidly. "Why, what a d.a.m.n-fool question for you to ask, Mr. Dunstan!

Isn't it right that we should look to the comfort of our helpless fellow-man? Isn't it right that we strong men should give of our strength to the weak? What in blue blazes are we living for in this enlightened day and generation if it isn't to do something that's worth while, and to leave behind us at the last something that hasn't got the American eagle stamped on it with the motto 'In G.o.d We Trust.' Ugh! How the good Lord must hate us for that copyrighted chunk of sophistry I It's a wonder He doesn't send His angels down to make us tend to business."

"Well, I'm not going to worry about it" retorted Dunstan crisply. "I'm too busy, and you're Johnny McGraw's boy Bob, so we won't quarrel about it. Good luck to you, old man. Get all the fun out of life that you possibly can--in your own way--and when you get your land and can show me, I'll take a $39,000 mortgage on it, at eight per cent. Now, good-by and get out. I'm a busy man."

Bob McGraw took up his big wide hat, shook hands with his father's old friend, and with heightened color withdrew. Out in the hall he paused long enough to swear; then, as suddenly, the old mocking cheerful inscrutable smile came sneaking back to his sun-tanned face, and he was at peace again. He had suddenly remembered that he was Bob McGraw, and he had faith in himself. He thought of Donna, waiting for him in lonely San Pasqual; he raised his hard brown fist, and in unconscious imitation of Paul Jones he cried aloud:

"I have not yet begun to fight!"

CHAPTER XI

It must have been a sublime faith in that homely adage that there are more ways of killing a cat than by choking him with b.u.t.ter which moved Bob McGraw to cudgel his nimble brain until he had discovered exactly how it would be possible for him to accomplish legally what every freebooter with an appraising eye on the public domain is troubled to accomplish illegally. The sole difference between Bob's projected course and that of his compet.i.tors' would be a slightly lessened profit; but after inventorying a free and easy conscience and posting it to the credit side of his profit and loss account, Bob knew that this apparent difference would dwindle until it would be scarcely perceptible.

Immediately after breakfast on the morning of the day following his interview with Homer Dunstan, Bob set to work to draw up the circular letter and contract form, to be submitted later to his prospective clients. In about fifteen minutes he had outlined the following:

THE PROPOSITION IS THIS

I have information of some state lieu lands which I believe can be taken up under the State laws at $1.25 per acre. The right to buy them will very probably have to be established and enforced by legal proceedings.

Now, this right to purchase state lieu lands is a limited personal right. (See Political Code, Section 3495, et seq.) I am willing to try to make YOUR right good to a tract of this land, under the conditions of the contract herewith. I am willing to stand the expenses of suit to enforce your right, and to advance for you the legal fees and the first preliminary payment to the state, on the chance of being able to secure you something sufficiently valuable to justify you in paying me the fee provided for in the contract. Read the contract carefully and note that you retain the right to cancel it and relieve yourself of all obligation in the matter _by abandoning your claim to the land._

READ THE CONTRACT CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU SIGN IT. BE SURE YOU UNDERSTAND JUST WHAT YOU ARE DOING.