MacDougall’s offices now occupied all of the ground floor of a large new building which he had built. Like everything else of his authorship this building represented a determined effort to lend the town an air of Eastern elegance. It was finished in an imitation of white marble and the offices had large plate glass windows which bore in gilt letters the legend: “MacDougall Land and Cattle Company, Inc.” Within, half a dozen girls in glass cages could be seen working at typewriters and adding machines, while a cashier occupied a little office of his own with a large safe at his back, a little brass grating in front of him, and a revolver visible not far from his right hand.
The creator of this magnificence sat behind a glasstop desk at the far end of a large and sunny office with a bare and slippery floor. Many a Mexican beggar for mercy, with a mortgage on [pg 119] his home, had walked across this forbidding expanse of polished hardwood toward the big man with the merciless eye, as fearfully as ever a peon, sentenced to forty lashes and salt in his wounds, approached the seat of his owner to plead for a whole skin. Truly, the weak can but change masters.
This morning MacDougall was all affability. As he stood up behind his desk, clad in a light grey suit, large and ruddy, radiant of health and prosperity, he was impressive, almost splendid. Only the eyes, small and closeset, revealed the worried and calculating spirit of the man.
“Mr. Delcasar,” he said when they had shaken hands and sat down, “I am glad to welcome you to this office, and I hope to see you here many times more. I will not waste time, for we are both busy men. I asked you to come here because I want to suggest a sort of informal partnership between us, such as I had with your late uncle, one of my best friends. I believe my plan will be for the best interests of both of us.… I suppose you know about what the arrangement was between the Don and myself?”
“No; not in detail,” Ramon confessed. He felt MacDougall’s power at once. Facing the man was a different matter from planning an interview with him when alone. But he retained sense enough to let MacDougall do the talking.
“Have a cigar,” the great man continued, full of sweetness, pushing a large and fragrant box of perfectos across the desk. “I will outline the situation to you briefly, as I see it.” Nothing could have seemed more frank and friendly than his manner.
“As you doubtless know,” he went on, “your estate includes a large area of mountain and mesa land—a little more than nine thousand acres I believe—north and west of the San Antonio River in Arriba County. I own nearly as much land on the east side of the river. The valley itself is owned by a number of natives in small farming tracts.
“I believe your estate also includes a few small parcels of land in the valley, but not enough, you understand, to be of much value by itself. Your uncle also owned a few tracts in the valley east of the river which he transferred to me, for a consideration, because they abutted upon my holdings.
“Now the valley, as I scarcely need tell you, is the key to the situation. In the first place, if the country is to be properly developed as sheep and cattle range, the valley will furnish the farming land upon which hay for winter use can be raised, and it also furnishes some good winter range. Moreover, it is now an open secret that the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad proposes building a branch line through that country and [pg 121] into the San Juan Valley. No surveys have been made, but it is certain that the road must follow the San Antonio to the top of the divide. There is no other way through. I became aware of this project some time ago through my eastern connections, and told your uncle about it. He and I joined forces for the purpose of gaining control of the San Antonio Valley, and of the railroad right-of-way.
“The proposition is a singularly attractive one. Not only could the right-of-way be sold for a very large sum, but we would afterward own a splendid bit of cattle range, with farming land in the valley, and with a railroad running through the centre of it. There is nothing less than a fortune to be made in the San Antonio Valley, Mr. Delcasar.