Pape was determined that her confidence should not be forced, even by her father. He interrupted briskly:
“Which or whether, let me trust you folks first. I am almost as much a stranger to you as you to me—and no more given to explanations than our young friend here. I feel kind of called to tell you who I am and why I’m stranded in this Far East of New York. You may scent something in common in the sad little story of my life, for I, too, am on a still hunt for an enemy or enemies unknown.”
He offered his tea cup for a refilling, climbed to his feet and steadied the china across to the white marble mantelpiece. There he stood and drank the beverage between the deliberate lines of his opening. He began at the beginning—or thereabouts—of Peter Pape. Over the early days of his stock-raising struggle to those of comparative, present success on the Queer Question Ranch he passed in fair style and with reasonable rapidity. Thence he slowed down to the near past and its sudden, oleaginous wealth.
As is so often the case in oil, he, as owner of the land, had been the last to suspect the presence of this liquid “gold” beneath his acres. Only the fact that he loved his ranch and would not sell the heart of it had saved him. Price proffers had risen slowly but surely until they reached figures which caused him to suspect, not the worst, but the best. He had drilled on a chance to a ceaseless flow of fortune.
His account carried its own conviction and fulfilled his preface except for one point. Where had he any cause, in this generous deal of Fate, to be resenting or seeking to punish enemies, unknown or otherwise? The blind man pointed the omission.
“Notwithstanding the enough-and-to-spare that I’ve got, sir, they stung me, these sharpers, through a lot of poor folks who couldn’t afford even a nettle prick. Before I got hep to what was up I had sold a small tract for which I had no further use to an alleged student of agriculture who had interested me in a new scheme for making alfalfa grow where nothing much ever had grown before. When my wells began to gush by fifties and hundreds of barrels, the backer of this fake farmer organized an oil company on the strength of his buy and floated stock right and left.”
He paused to clinch and thump a fist upon the mantel-shelf; then glowered unreasonably at the nervous quivers of the wax flowers within the glass case which formed its centerpiece.
“When widows with orphans from everywhere and some of my friends from nearby cow-towns began to write and ask me about their promised dividends—Well, folks, in time I got wisened to the fact that my name had been used along with the fame of Queer Question production. I asked myself a question that didn’t sound as queer to me as to the bunch of sharpers that I soon put it to. After I’d gathered them in and the Federal Court had helped me hand ’em what was over-due, I started on a long, long trail after the big guy that had planned the crooked deal. I’m still stalking him. He’s lurking down in that gulch of Wall Street to-day or I’m clean off the trail. You see, friends, the Montana Gusher Oil Fields, Inc., hasn’t even a smell of oil. When I find the promoter——”
“Montana Gusher—was that the company’s name?” Jane’s interruption was more than interested; was voiced with suppressed excitement. She turned toward her father. “You remember my telling you of Aunt Helene’s narrow escape from buying a block of worthless oil stock a year ago? She was only saved by——”
“Child, child, don’t name names,” the blind man reproved her. On his face, however, was the reflex of her startled look.