“Oh, no; that was last year, just previous to my reporting on a newspaper. This”—and Mr. Opp tried to spread out his hands, but was slightly deterred by the size of his cuffs—“this is the chance I been looking for all my life. It takes brains and a’ educated nerve, and a knowledge of the world. I ought to create considerable capital in the next few years. And just as soon as I do”—and Mr. Opp leaned earnestly toward Jimmy, and tapped one finger upon the palm of his other hand—“just as soon as I do, I intend to buy up all the land lying between Turtle Creek and the river. There’s enough oil under that there ground to ca’m the troubled waters of the Pacific Ocean. You remember old Mr. Beeker? Well, he told me, ten years ago, that he bored a well for brine over there, and it got so full of black petroleum he had to abandon it. [p11] Now, I’m calculating on forming a stock company,—you and Mr. Tucker, I and old man Hager, and one or two others,—and buying up that ground. Then we’ll sink a test well, get up a derrick and a’ engine, and have the thing running in no time. The main thing is a competent manager. You know I’m thinking seriously of taking it myself? It’s too big a proposition to run any risks with.”
“Here, say, wait a minute; how long have you had this here shoe job?” Jimmy caught madly at the first fact in sight to keep him from being swept away by the flood of Mr. Opp’s oily possibilities.
“I taken it last week,” said Mr. Opp; “had to go all the way to Chicago to get my instructions, and to get fitted out. My territory is a specially important one; four counties, all round Chicago.”
“I was in Chicago oncet,” said Jimmy, his eyes brightening at the memory. “By golly! if the world is as big in every direction as it is in that, she’s a whopper!”
[p12]
The wind, freshening as they got under way, loosened the canvas overhead, and Mr. Opp rose to buckle it into place. As he half knelt in the bow of the boat, he lifted his face to the cool breeze, and took a deep breath of satisfaction. The prosaic river from Coreyville to the Cove was the highway he knew best in the world. Under the summer sunshine the yellow waters lost their sullen hue, and reflected patches of vivid red and white from the cottages and barns that dotted the distant shore.
“I don’t consider there’s any sceneries in the country that’ll even begin to compare with these here,” Mr. Opp announced, out of the depths of his wide experience. “Just look at the sunshine pouring forth around the point of the island. It spills through the trees and leaks out over the water just like quicksilver. Now, that’s a good thought! It’s perfectly astounding, you might say surprising, how easy thoughts come to me. I ought to been a writer; lots of folks have said so. Why, there ain’t a [p13] day of my life that I don’t get a poem in my head.”
“Shucks!” observed Jimmy Fallows. “I’d as lief read figgers on a tow-boat as to read poetry. Old man Gusty used to write poetry, but he couldn’t get nobody to print it, so he decided to start a newspaper at the Cove and chuck it full of his own poems. He bought a whole printin’ outfit, and set it up in Pete Aker’s old carpenter shop out there at the edge of town, opposite his home. But ’fore he got his paper started he up and died. Yes, sir; and the only one of his poems that he ever did git in print was the one his wife had cut on his tombstone.”
Mr. Opp was not listening. With his head bared and his lips parted he was indulging in his principal weakness. For Mr. Opp, it must be confessed, was given to violent intoxication, not from an extraneous source, but from too liberal draughts of his own imagination. In extenuation, the claims of genius might be urged, for a genius he unquestionably [p14] was in that he created something out of nothing. Out of an abnormal childhood, a lonely boyhood, and a failure-haunted manhood, he had managed to achieve an absorbing career. Each successive enterprise had loomed upon his horizon big with possibilities, and before it sank to oblivion, another scheme, portentous, significant, had filled its place. Life was a succession of crises, and through them he saw himself moving, now a shrewd merchant, now a professional man, again an author of note, but oftenest of all a promoter of great enterprises, a financier, and man of affairs.
While he was thus mentally engaged in drilling oil-wells, composing poetry, and selling shoes, Jimmy Fallows was contemplating with fascinated wonder an object that floated from his coat pocket. From a brown-paper parcel, imperfectly wrapped, depended a curl of golden hair, and it bobbed about in the breeze in a manner that reduced Mr. Fallows to a state of abject curiosity.
So intent was Jimmy upon his investigation [p15] that he failed to hold his course, and the launch swung around the end of the island with such a sudden jerk that Mr. Opp took an unexpected seat.