There was one question uppermost in Gully's mind that would persist in its recurrence, and that was: "Who was this Jack Norton, this waif of the sandy desert, who with the last few hours, with apparently no other incentive than a desire to help one who had befriended him, had developed into a thorough business man, with unlimited capacity for facts and figures?"
While Travis Gully was asking himself these questions his wife, in the adjoining room, was busily racking her mind with the one thought: "Was Ida interested in Jack, and if so, to what extent, and had he noticed it?" She would know at the first opportunity. She would ask her, but she must be careful, and she smiled; Ida was such a child.
Jack Norton, oblivious to the thoughts that were filling the minds of his friends, worked on at the formulation of his plans. It had been months, it seemed like years to him, since he had been given an opportunity to work at something worth while. It was true that the amount in dollars and cents involved in this entire transaction would be at best but a few hundred, but it was business, and recalled to his mind other days when he had worked out larger plans; yes, very much larger, where thousands of dollars were involved.
He laughed whimsically to himself after he had handed the final product of his hours of work to Travis Gully to read. It was a recapitulation of the whole transaction, condensed and simplified in a manner that he was sure would bring it within his understanding, and as Gully read, his brow contracted with many wrinkles as his brain groped for an interpretation of the mass of figures, Jack Norton compared these existing conditions with other scenes in his past, when he had entered noiselessly through swinging glass doors and over dustless carpets into the presence of the older Norton, his "Governor," and submitted for his inspection a sheet of about the same dimensions containing, not a written agreement whereby one or more men do "agree to remove the sagebrush from, plow and make ready for planting certain lands beginning at, etc.," but a neatly prepared statement of his college expenses, supplemented with a request for an additional allowance for golf, yachting, etc.
When Travis Gully had finished reading the paper Norton had given him he handed it back, asked one or two questions about things he did not fully understand, and upon their being explained, said: "It's all right as far as I can see." Norton took the paper, folded it neatly, and placed it on the table, and after assembling the scattered sheets upon which he had been figuring, he placed them in a neat pile, using an empty coffee cup for a paper weight, he handed Gully the folded sheet, together with the pencil with which he had been working, and after asking what time he proposed to start for town in the morning, remarked that "He guessed he would go home."
To this Gully objected, telling him there was no need of his going; that he could sleep there and they would get an early start. This was agreed upon, and a few minutes later the Gully home was in darkness.
CHAPTER XVII.
Gully and Norton reached the village the following day about the middle of the forenoon, and driving directly to the one hotel of which the town boasted, found the strangers awaiting their arrival. The old gentleman was walking impatiently to and fro on the narrow board walk that did duty as a porch, and the two younger men were idly glancing through some well worn back number magazines with which the writing table in the one waiting room of the hotel was strewn.