“Oh, tolerably clever!” and the old villain chuckled with delight as he thought of the wrong he had done the dead man.
“But, how did you fix it about the witnesses? I should have thought that would have bothered you.”
“Oh, no! I got two drunken miners to affix their names to it; things in the law way are rough out here; no one made any objection to the will, or, in fact, made any inquiry about it at all. I took possession, and of course hold the property now.”
“How much is the whole thing worth?” asked Dick.
“About fifteen thousand dollars,” answered the old man.
“Then this girl, this Leona Vender, is the real heir to—”
“The mine known as Rattlesnake Gulch—exactly,” said the father. “As soon as I had the estate fixed up and properly made over to me, I wrote East for you to come on; and the very same day that I received your letter telling me when you would start, I received a letter from this girl Leona, of course directed to her father, telling him when she would start to join him; and she was to come just one week after you. By her letter, I guessed that Vender had sent her money to come on with—perhaps told her of his success and of his prospects. Now, this letter struck me cold. Of course if she ever arrived at Spur City, she would instantly expose me, and the chances are that, if she ever does get there, proclaims her relationship with Daniel Vender and denounces me as an impostor, the citizens of Spur City will give me a taste of Judge Lynch, for justice is very speedy in the mountain region when they once get their hands in.”
“What do you think of doing?” asked the son, anxiously.
“In the first place, let me see what I have done, so as to make the case all complete,” said Eben. “I wrote you that I would meet you at St. Paul. I did so. The girl, in her letter, said that she also would come by that route. That was the reason why we waited a week there; you remember you wondered at my delay. Well, I was waiting for her. I kept close watch. At last she came; I found out all about her, and made arrangements to come in the same wagon-train. Now, then, this was my calculation. I was pretty sure that Vender had never written his daughter any thing about me. I took pains to be introduced to her. I noticed that she manifested no surprise at the mention of my name, which convinced me that my suspicions were right and that she had never heard of me. If you remember, I cautioned you not to say any thing about Spur City, or that I knew any thing of the place, to any of our companions. My first plan was this: I thought that the girl on the journey might take a fancy to you; if she would only fall in love with and marry you, why then every thing would be all right, for, of course she wouldn’t want to prosecute her father-in-law for forgery, and the whole affair would be settled forever.”