Mr. Kean stopped at the banks of a lonesome tarn, filled with black water with a greasy looking slime over it.
“Look at those bubbles over there! Could they be caused by turtles? No, turtles could not live in this Dead Sea. Look, look! More and more of them. Watch that big one break! See the greasy ring he made!”
He was so excited that Edwin Green smiled to see how alike father and daughter were, and was amused at himself for speaking of the Browns as being people who went off half-cocked to this man who was a hair trigger if ever there was one.
Mr. Kean stooped over and scooped up some of the water in his hand. “‘If my old nose don’t tell no lies, seems like I smell custard pies.’ Why, Green, smell this! It’s simply reeking of petroleum! I bet that old Mrs. Clay will come to wish she had made a different division of her father’s estate. Come on, let’s go break the news to the Browns.”
“But are you certain enough? They may be disappointed,” said the more cautious Edwin.
“I am sure enough to want to send to Louisville immediately for a drill to test it. I have had a lot of experience with oil in various places and I am a regular oil wizard. You have heard of a water witch? My friends say that my nose has never played me false, and I can smell out oil lands that they would buy on the say-so of my scent as quickly as with the proof of a drill and pump. My, I’m glad for this good luck to come to these people who have been so good to my little girl.”
The two men were very much excited as they made their way back to the house.
“It is funny the way oil crops up in unexpected places,” said Mr. Kean. “There is very little of it in this belt, and for that reason Mrs. Brown should get a very good price for her land. I think it best for her to sell to the Trust as soon as possible. There is no use in fighting them. They are obliged to win out. They will be pretty square with her if she does not try to fight them. What a fine young fellow that Kent is! And as for Miss Molly, she is a corker! She has got my poor little wild Indian of a Judy out of dozens of scrapes at college. Judy always ends by telling us all about the terrible things that almost happened to her. She seems to me to be a little tamer, but maybe it is a strangeness from not seeing us for so long.”
Edwin Green had his own opinion about the reason for that seeming tameness, but he held his peace. He could not help seeing Kent’s partiality for Miss Julia Kean, and had no reason to believe otherwise than that the young lady reciprocated. Love, or the possibility of loving, might be a great tamer for Judy. He was really not far from the mark. Judy was interested in Kent, very much so, but it was ambition that was steadying her and a determination to do something with the artistic talent that she was almost sure she possessed. Paris was her Mecca, and she was preparing herself to talk it out with her parents. They, poor grown-up children that they were, had no plans for their daughter’s future. College had solved the problem for four years, but, now that that was over, what to do with her next? They loved to have her with them and had looked forward eagerly to the time when she could be with them, but after all was a railway camp the best place for a girl of Judy’s stamp?
“Mrs. Brown, what will you take for that barren strip of land over there?” said Mr. Kean, sinking into a chair on the porch where the ladies were still having their quiet talk.