The Cow Puncher - Robert J. C. Stead (best reads .TXT) 📗

had gone to visit a girl friend in the country; would be away for some time. Dave felt a foolish annoyance that she should have left town. She might at least have called him up. Why should she call him up? Of course not. Still, the town was very empty. He drove with Mrs. Duncan in the afternoon, and at night took a long walk by the river. He had a vague but oppressive sense of loneliness. He had not realized what part of his life these Sunday afternoons with Edith had come to be. He had no man friends; his nature held him apart from his own sex. And yet he had a strange capacity for making friends quickly, if he tried. But he didn't try. He didn't feel the need. But he felt lost without Edith.

A few days later Conward strolled in, with the inevitable cigarette. He smoked in silence until Dave completed a story.

"Good stuff you're giving us," he commented, when the article was finished. "Mighty good stuff."

"Your tip put me on to a good lead all right," Dave acknowledged. "And now The Times is chasing me hard. They had a story this morning that the —— railway is buying a right-of-way up the river."

"Remember what I told you the other day? Stories start from nowhere. It's just like putting a match to tinder. Now we're off."

Conward smoked a few minutes in silence, but Dave could not fail to see the excitement under his calm exterior. He had, as he said, decided to "sit in" in the biggest game ever played. The intoxication of sudden wealth had already fired his blood.

He slipped a bill to Dave. "For your services in that little transaction," he explained.

Elden held the bill in his fingers, gingerly, as though it might carry infection, as in very truth it did. He realized that he stood at a turning point—that everything the future held for him might rest on his present decision. There remained in him not a little of the fine, stern honour of the ranchmen of the open range; an honour curious, sometimes terrible, in its interpretation of right and wrong, but a fine, stern honour none the less. And he instinctively felt that to accept this money would compromise him forever more. And yet—others did it. He had no doubt of that. Conward would laugh at such scruples. And Conward had more friends than he had. Everybody liked Conward. It seemed to Dave that he, only, distrusted him. But that, also, as Dave said to himself, lay in the point of view. He granted that he had no more right to impose his standard of morals upon Conward than the preacher had to impose an arbitrary belief upon him. And as he turned the bill in his fingers he noticed that it was for one hundred dollars. He had thought it was ten.

"I can't take that much," he exclaimed. "It isn't fair."

"Fair enough," said Conward, well pleased that Dave should be impressed by his generosity. "Fair enough," he repeated. "It's just ten per cent. of my profit."

"You mean you made a thousand dollars on that deal?"

"Exactly that. And that will look like a peanut to what we are going to make later on."

"We?"

"Yes. You and me. We're going into partnership."

"But I've nothing to invest. I've only a very little saved up."

"Invest that hundred."

Dave looked at Conward sharply. Was he trifling? No; his eyes were frank and serious.

"You mean it?"

"Of course. Now, I'll put you on to something, and it's the biggest thing that has been pulled off yet. There's a section of land lying right against the city limits that is owned by a fellow over in England; remittance man who fell heir to an estate and had to go home to spend it. Well, he has been paying taxes ever since, and is tired of the 'bally rawnch'; besides, he is busy keeping his property in England reasonably well spent. I am arranging through a London office to offer him ten dollars an acre, and I'll bet he jumps at it. I've arranged for the necessary credits, but there will be some expenses for cables, etc., and you can put your hundred into that. If we pull it off—and we will pull it off—we start up in business as Conward & Elden, or Elden & Conward, which ever sounds better. Boy, there's a fortune in it."

"What do you figure it's worth?" said Dave, trying to speak easily. "Twenty-five dollars an acre?"

"Twenty-five dollars an acre!" Conward shouted. "Dave, newspaper routine has killed your imagination, little as one would expect such a result, from some of the things the papers print. Twenty-five dollars an acre! Listen!

"The city boundaries are to be extended—probably will be by the time this deal goes through. Then it is city property. A street railway system is to be built, and we'll see that it runs through our land. We may have to 'grease' somebody, but it's a poor engineer that saves on grease. Then we'll survey that section into twenty-five foot lots—and we'll sell them at two hundred dollars each for those nearest the city down to one hundred for those farthest out—average one hundred and fifty, total nine hundred and sixty thousand dollars. Allow say sixty thousand for 'grease' and there is still nine hundred thousand, and that doesn't count re-sale commissions. Dave, it's good for a cool million. And that is just the beginning. It will give us a standing that will make anything possible."

Dave was doing rapid thinking. Suddenly he faced Conward, and their eyes met. "Conward," he said, "why do you put this up to me?"

"What d'ye mean?"

"You don't need my little hundred to put this over. Why do you let me in on it?"

Conward smiled and breathed easily. There had been a moment of tension.

"Oh, that's simple," he answered. "I figure this business is going to be too big for me, and you are the partner I need. I figure we'll travel well in double harness. I'm a good mixer—I know people—and I've got ideas. And you're sound and honourable and people trust you."

"Thanks," said Dave, dryly.

"That's right," Conward continued. "We'll be a combination hard to beat. You know the story about the brothers in the coal business?"

"No."

"Jim and Fred were coal dealers, when a revival broke out in their town, and Jim got religion. Then he tried to convert Fred; tried awful hard to get Fred to at least go to the meetings. But Fred wouldn't budge. Said it wasn't practicable. Jim argued and coaxed and prayed, but without result. At last he put it up to Fred.

"'Fred,' he said, 'why won't you come to our meetings?'"

"'Well,' the brother answered, 'it was all right for you to get religion. Sort o' lends respectability to the firm. But if I get it too, who's going to weigh the coal?'"

The two men laughed over the story, and yet it left an unpleasant impression upon Dave. He had never felt sure of Conward, and now he felt less sure than ever. But the lust of easy money was beginning to stir within him. The bill in his hands represented more than three weeks' wages. Conward was making money—making money fast, and surely here was an opportunity such as comes once in a lifetime. A boy shoved in his head and yelled for copy. Dave swore at him, impatiently. He had never before realized how irksome the drudgery of his steady grind had become.

"I'll go you," he said to Conward at last. "I'll risk this hundred, and a little more if necessary."

"Good," said Conward, springing to his feet and taking Dave's hand in a warm grasp. "Now we're away. But you better play safe. Stick to your pay cheque here until we pull the deal through. There won't be much to do until then, anyway, and you can help more by guiding the paper along right lines."

"It sounds like a fairy tale," Dave demurred, as though unwilling to credit the possibilities Conward had outlined. "You're sure it can be done?"

"Done? Why, son, it has been done in all the big centres in the States, and at many a place that'll never be a centre at all. And it will be done here. Dave, bigger things than you dare to dream of are looming up right ahead."

Then Dave had a qualm. "If that section of land is worth close to a million dollars," he said, "is it quite fair to take advantage of the owner's absence and ignorance to buy it for a few thousand?"

"Dave," said Conward, with an arm on his shoulder, "the respectability of the firm is safe in your hands. But—please let me weigh the coal."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

David Elden smoked his after-dinner cigar in his bachelor quarters. The years had been good to the firm of Conward & Elden; good far beyond the wildness of their first dreams. The transaction of the section bought from the English absentee had been but the beginning of bigger and more daring adventures. That section was now considered close-in property, and lots which Conward & Elden had originally sold for two hundred dollars each had since changed hands at more than a thousand. The street railway ran far beyond it. Water mains, sewers, electric lights, graded streets and concrete sidewalks had sprawled for miles across the prairie. Conward, in that first wild prophecy of his, had spoken of a city of a quarter of a million people; already more lots had been sold than could be occupied by four times that population.

It had been a very marvellous development; an enthusiasm which had grown deeper and wilder until it swept along as an insane abandon, bearing in its current the last vestiges of conservatism and caution. For at last the old-timers, long alluded to as the "dead ones," had come in. For years they had held back, scoffing, predicting disaster; and while they held back venturesome youths had become millionaires. One can stand that only so long, and at last the old-timers were buying and selling and debauching with the others in the lust of easy money.

Dave had often asked himself where it all would end. He traced it from its beginning; from the day when he wrote his first "boost" story; from the hundred-dollar bill that Conward had placed in his hands. It was a simple course to trace; so simple now that he was amazed that only Conward and a few shrewd others had seen it at that time. It had begun with the prosperity of incoming money; the money of a little group of speculators and adventurers and the others who hung on their train. They had filled the few hotels and office buildings. Presently some one began to build a new hotel. Labour was scarce and dear; carpenters, masons, bricklayers, plumbers, plasterers, labourers, had to be brought in from the outside. There was no place for them to sleep; there was no place for them to eat; there were insufficient stores to supply their wants. More hotels and shops and stores and houses had to be built, and to build them more carpenters and masons and bricklayers and plumbers and plasterers and painters had to be brought from the outside. The thing grew upon itself. It was like a fire starting slowly in the still prairie grass, which by its own heat creates a breeze that in turn gives birth to a gale that whips it forth in uncontrollable fury. Houses went up, blocks of them, streets of them, miles of them, but they could not keep pace with the demand, for every builder of a house must have a roof to sleep under. And there were streets to build; streets to grade and fill and pave; ditches to dig and sidewalks to lay and wires to string. And more houses had to be built for the men who paved streets and dug ditches and laid sidewalks and strung wires. And more