“But, Dinky-Dunk,” I began. I didn’t need to continue, for he seemed able to read my thoughts.
“I was counting on two full sections for Allie in the Simmond’s Valley tract. That land is worth thirty dollars an acre, unbroken, at any time. But the bank’s swept that into the bag, of course, along with the rest. The whole thing was like a stack of nine-pins—when one tumbled, it knocked the other over. I thought I could manage to save that much for her, out of the ruin. But the bank saw the land-boom was petering out. They shut off my credit, and foreclosed on the city block—and that sent the whole card-house down.”
I had a great deal of thinking to do, during the next minute or two.
“Then isn’t it up to us to knuckle down, Dinky-Dunk, and make good on that Lady Alicia mistake? If we get a crop this year we can—”
But Dinky-Dunk shook his head. “A thousand bushels an acre couldn’t get me out of this mess,” he maintained.
“Why not?”
“Because your Lady Alicia and her English maid have already arrived in Montreal,” he quietly announced.
“How do you know that?”
“She wrote to me from New York. She’s had influenza, and it left her with a wheezy tube and a spot on her lungs, as she put it. Her doctor told her to go to Egypt, but she says Egypt’s impossible, just now, and if she doesn’t like our West she says she’ll amble on to Arizona, or try California for the winter.” He looked away, and smiled rather wanly. “She’s counting on the big game shooting we can give her!”
“Grizzly, and buffalo, and that sort of thing?”