“But how much?”
“Some five or six miles.”
“Gee! That must be over a hundred acres. I didn’t know anybody owned that much land. Where’d you get it?”
“In part from my father.”
“What business was he in?”
“He was a pirate, Jimmy, or at least, they said he was. But my mother was not.—I will tell you,” I added suddenly: “my father owned a great deal of timber land long ago, and iron, and oil, and copper, when nobody cared much for them. They say, now, he stole some of them, I don’t know. In those days people weren’t so particular. The more he got, the more he wanted. He never was a boy like you and me. He educated me as a lawyer, so that I could take care of his business and his property, and he trained me in the pirate business the best he could, and I made money too, all I wanted. You see, my father could never get enough, but I did; perhaps, because my mother wasn’t a pirate, you see. So, when I got enough, my father and mother both died, and when I began to see that, maybe, my father had taken a little more than our share, I began trying to do something for people ... but I can’t talk about that, of course.”
“Well, why not?” demanded Lafitte. “Go on.”
“A fellow doesn’t like to.”
“But what did you do?”
“Very little. I found I could not do very much. I gave some buildings to schools, that sort of thing. No one thanked me much. A good many called me a Socialist.”