“I never heard of that before!” she told him.
“It wasn’t generally known. In fact, it was apparently generally considered that the land had been sold by the Midland Company to various people—in small parcels. Unscrupulous agents engineered the sales, I suppose. But the fact is that I made the purchase from the Midland Company years ago—largely as a personal favor to Jim Marchmont, who needed money badly. And a great many of the ranch-owners around here really have no title to their land, and will have to give it up.”
She breathed deeply. “That will be a great disappointment to them, now that there exists the probability of a great advance in the value of the land.”
“That was the owners’ lookout. A purchaser should see that his deed is clear before closing a deal.”
“What owners will be affected?” She spoke with a slight breathlessness.
“Many.” He named some of them, leaving Trevison to the last, and then watching her furtively out of the corners of his eyes and noting, with straightened lips, the quick gasp she gave. She said nothing; she was thinking of the great light that had been in Trevison’s eyes on the day he had told her of his ten years of exile; she could remember his words, they had been vivid fixtures in her mind ever since: “I own five thousand acres, and about a thousand acres of it is the best coal land in the United States. I wouldn’t sell it for love or money, for when your father gets his railroad running, I’m going to cash in on ten of the leanest and hardest and lonesomest years that any man ever put in.”
How hard it would be for him to give it all up; to acknowledge defeat, to feel those ten wasted years behind him, empty, unproductive; full of shattered hopes and dreams changed to nightmares! She sat, white of face, gripping the arms of her chair, feeling a great, throbbing sympathy for him.
“You will take it all?”
“He will still hold one hundred and sixty acres—the quarter-section granted him by the government, which he has undoubtedly proved on.”
“Why—” she began, and paused, for to go further would be to inject her personal affairs into the conversation.