"How?" I asked, and the gaunt farmer sighed a little as he filled his pipe. "This way. He was open to finance me to buy up a poor devil's place, and if I'd had a little less temper and a little more sense I might have obliged him, and landed a good pile of money, too."
"He's just talking. Don't you believe him," broke in the woman, with an indignant glance at her spouse.
I fancied Boone saw the drift of this, which was more than I did, and the farmer nodded oracularly in his direction when I asked: "What did you do instead?"
"Just reached for a big ox-goad, and walked up to him like a blame millionaire or a hot-headed fool. Them negotiations broke right off, and he lit out across the prairie talking 'bout assaults and violences at twenty mile an hour. Some other man will know better, and that's just how Lane will get badly left some day."
The woman laughed immoderately. "It was way better'n a circus," she said. "He didn't tell you he rammed the ox-goad into the skittish horse, and Lane he just hugged the beast."
The picture of the full-fledged Lane, who made a very poor figure in the saddle at any time, careering panic stricken across the prairie with his arms about the neck of a bolting horse appealed to me; but as to the possibility of the usurer's future discomfiture I was still in the dark, and asked for enlightenment.
"It's easy," said the farmer. "Lane he squeezes somebody until he can't hold on to his property, then he puts up the money and another man buys the place dirt-cheap for him, in his own name. Suppose that man goes back on Lane? 'This place is my own,' says he. Well, he's recorded owner, isn't he? and I figure Lane wouldn't be mighty keen on dragging that kind of case into the courts."
"But he wouldn't put any man in unless he had him by the throat," said I; and the farmer grinned.
"Juss so! He'll choke some fellow with grit in him a bit too much some day, and when the wrong breed of scoundrel is jammed right up between the devil and the sea, it's quite likely he'll go for the devil before he starts swimming."
"I"—and Boone regarded the farmer fixedly—"quite agree with you. Do you mind telling me what you gave for this place?"