| Seattle R. E. | 175,000 | (about) |
| Broken Axe (Gov't 3's) | 250,000 | |
| A. T. & S. F. bonds | 20,000 | |
| Phœnix Lumber | 75,000 | |
| Other securities | 100,900 | (maybe) |
His jaw fell and he gulped when he tried to speak. Even Amzi could not joke about half a million dollars.
"Thunder! You must be fooling, Lois."
"I may be fooled about some of that stuff, but those figures are supposed to be conservative by people who ought to know."
"Lord! you're a rich woman, Lois," he remarked with awe. "It's flabbergasting!"
"Oh, I haven't done so badly. You'd probably like to know how it came about, and I might as well tell you the whole story. Jack was an awful fizzle—absolutely no good. I saw that early in the game, and I knew where I'd bring up if I didn't look out for myself. He began nibbling like a hungry rat at my share of father's estate as soon as you sent it to me. I backed him in half a dozen things he wanted to go into. He hadn't the business sense of a baby, and I began to see that I was going to bump my head good and hard if I didn't look sharp. He began to cheer himself during his failures by getting drunk, which wasn't exactly pretty. He went his way and I went mine, and as he lied to me about everything I began to lie to him about my money. I made some friends, and one of these happened to be the wife of a banker with brains. Through him I made some small turns in real estate, covering them up so Jack wouldn't know. The fifth year after I left here I made twenty thousand dollars in one turn. Then I grub-staked two young fellows who wanted to try their luck in Nevada—nice college boys, all on the square. I invested about two thousand dollars in those youngsters, and as a result got into Broken Axe. It was so good that it scared me, and I sold out for the two hundred and fifty thousand you see on the slip there, and bought Government bonds with it. My banker covered all these things up for me as long as I had Jack on my hands. When he became intolerable I got rid of him, legally, for fear he'd cause trouble if he found what I'd been doing. I'm a little tired of running my own business now and mean to dump it off on you if you don't mind. I left my papers in a safety vault in Chicago, but here's my Phœnix Lumber and a jumble of miscellaneous junk I want to send West to be sold so I can put it into things around here. I'm not going back there any more."
"Lord!" he ejaculated, rubbing his head. "You made all that money yourself?"
"Sheer luck, mostly. But it isn't so bad, take it all round. By the way, in that junk there are some Sycamore Traction bonds I took off the bank's hands out there. They were carrying them as collateral for a man Sam Holton stung on one of his Western trips. He'd planted all he could in New York and had to try a new field. The bank foreclosed on the bonds and I bought twenty of them at sixty-five. I suppose from what I hear that they're not good for much but kindling."
"You got 'em at sixty-five, Lois?"
"The bank only lent on them at that, and there was no market for them out there. What's going to become of that road?"