But Mr. Horton’s thin lips parted in a wolfish smile. “Oh—ho! you’re up on the homestead laws to some extent, I see. Crops do go with the land when the claimant forfeits his right to the land that bears them. Your father, he forfeited his right by getting drownded, and no one has entered the claim since, so I’m about to enter it. As I said before I ain’t a hard man, and I’m willing to make it as easy as I can for you, so I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll pay a fair price for such improvements as your father made. They don’t amount to much—”
“But if you should decide to commute the claim, instead of waiting five years to prove up, it would be worth a good deal to you to be able to swear that such and such things had stood on the place so long, which you could not do if we took our improvements away; for we have a right to remove whatever we have built, if we do not keep the claim.”
Mr. Horton’s narrow eyes rested on me with anything but a friendly expression. “You’re posted quite a consid’able; ain’t you, Miss Smarty? Pity you didn’t know jest a little mite more. Well; we won’t quarrel over a little thing like that. I’ll pay for the improvements, and you’ll jest leave ’em where they are. This house, now, I’ll take a look at it; it don’t amount to much, that’s so, but such as ’tis, I’ll look at it.”
“You are welcome to do so,” Jessie assured him.
I think it came into her mind, as it certainly did into mine, that he wished to ascertain if the house were not lacking in some one or more of the essential equipments of a homesteader’s claim. If he should discover such a lack his task would be all the easier. I ran over a hasty, furtive inventory on my fingers: “Cat, clock, table, chairs, stove—”
The cat was lying comfortably outstretched on the window ledge, her head resting on the open pages of the Bible, that we had both neglected to replace. The clock ticked loudly from its place on the mantel-piece; there was a fire in the stove, and, absorbed in staring, Mr. Horton stumbled over one of the chairs. The result of his inspection did not please him; he scowled at the cat, who resented his glance by springing from the window and hissing spitefully at his legs as she passed him on her way out. Her sudden spring drew our visitor’s attention to the book on which her head had been resting; the written pages attracted his notice.
“What’s that?” he demanded, going nearer, the better to examine them.
“That is our family Bible,” Jessie replied, laying her hand upon it reverently. “This”—she looked up at him with a kind of still, pale defiance—“this is the Gordon family record! It has been kept in these pages since the days of our great-great-grandfather, and”—she turned the book so that Mr. Horton’s eyes rested on the entry—“it may interest you to know that I am eighteen, of legal age, to-day.”
Mr. Horton’s jaw dropped, and for a speechless instant he looked the picture of blank amazement, then he rallied.