“I'm making it thirty dollars an acre,” he explained.
“That's fair,” conceded the banker, “though the time will come when it will be cheap at a hundred and a half. There's coal under all this county, millions of dollars' worth waiting to be mined.”
“Maybe,” assented Martin, laconically.
As he sat in the dingy, little backroom of the bank, while Robinson's pen scratched busily drawing up the papers, he was conscious of an odd thrill. The land—it was all his own! But with this thrill welled a wave of resentment over what he considered a preposterous imposition. Who had made the land into a farm? What had Nellie ever put into it that it should be half hers? His mother—now, that was different. She and he had toiled side by side like real partners; her efforts had been real and unstinted. If he were buying her out, for instance—but Nellie! Well, that was the way, he noticed, with many women—doing little and demanding much. He didn't care for them; not he. From the day Nellie left, Martin managed alone in the shack, “baching it,” and putting his whole heart and soul into the development of his quarter-section.
II. OUT OF THE DUST
AT thirty-four, Martin was still unmarried, and though he had not travelled far on that strange road to affluence which for some seems a macadamized boulevard, but for so many, like himself, a rough cow-path, he had done better than the average farmer of Fallon County. To be sure, this was nothing over which to gloat. A man who received forty cents a bushel for wheat was satisfied; corn sold at twenty-eight cents, and the hogs it fattened in proportion. But his hundred and sixty acres were clear from debt, four thousand dollars were on deposit drawing three per cent in The First State Bank—the old Bank of Fallon, now incorporated with Robinson as its president. In the pasture, fourteen sows with their seventy-five spring pigs rooted beside the sleek herd of steers fattening for market; the granary bulged with corn; two hundred bushels of seed wheat were ready for sowing; his machinery was in excellent condition; his four Percheron mares brought him, each, a fine mule colt once a year; and the well never went dry, even in August. Martin was—if one discounted the harshness of the life, the dirt, the endless duties and the ever-pressing chores—a Kansas plutocrat.
One fiery July day, David Robinson drew up before Martin's shack. The little old box-house was still unpainted without and unpapered within. Two chairs, a home-made table with a Kansas City Star as a cloth, a sheetless bed, a rough cupboard, a stove and floors carpeted with accumulations of untidiness completed the furnishings.
“Chris-to-pher Columbus!” exploded Robinson, “why don't you fix yourself up a bit, Martin? The Lord knows you're going to be able to afford it. What you need is a wife—someone to look after you.” And as Martin, observing him calmly, made no response, he added, “I suppose you know what I want. You've been watching for this day, eh, Martin? All Fallon County's sitting on its haunches—waiting.”
“Oh, I haven't been worrying. A fellow situated like me, with a hundred and sixty right in the way of a coal company, can afford to be independent.”