“Won’t Smoke make a fuss, though?”
“Not if I tell him to go. Oh, you needn’t grin. See here.” Bascomb called the dog to him, and taking the wide jaws between his hands he spoke quietly. “Smoke,” he said, “I’m going to leave you with Davy. He is a chaste and upright young man, so far as I ken. Quite suitable as a companion for you. You stick to him and do as he says. Look after him, for he needs looking after. And don’t you leave him till I come for you, sir! Now, go and shake hands on it.”
The dog strode to David and raised a muscular foreleg. Laughing, David seized it and shook it vigorously.
“It’s a bargain, Smoke.”
The terrier walked to Bascomb, sniffed at his knees and then returned to David, but his narrow eyes moved continually with Bascomb’s nervous tread back and forth across the room.
“What’s on your mind, Wallie?”
“Oh, mud—mostly. Dirt, earth, land, real-estate; but don’t mind me. I was just concocting a letter to the pater. Say, Davy, you don’t want a job, do you? You know some law and enough about land deals, to—to cook ’em up so they won’t smell too strong, don’t you?”
“That depends, Walt.”
“Well, the deal I have in mind depends, all right. It’s hung up—high. It’s this way. That strip of timber on the other side of No-Man’s Lake, up Lost Farm way, has never seen an axe nor a cross-cut saw. There’s pine there that a friend of mine says is ready money for the chap that corrals it. I wrote the pater and he likes the idea of buying it out and out and holding on till the railroad makes it marketable. And the road is going plumb through one end of it. Besides, the pater’s on the N. M. & Q. Board of Directors. When the road buys the right-of-way through that strip, there’ll be money in it for the owner. I’ve been after it on the Q.T., but the irate gentleman with the one lamp, who held me up on the survey, said that ‘if it was worth sellin’, by Godfrey, it was worth keepin’.’ I showed him a certified check that would seduce an angel, but he didn’t shed a whisker. My commission would have kept me in Paris for a year.” Bascomb sighed lugubriously. “Do you want to tackle it, Davy?”
“Thanks for the chance, Wallie, but I’m engaged for the winter, at least.”