The agent thought of the piles of reports on his table, but as he thumped the stamp on the tickets he answered, "Oh, I worry over the Monroe doctrine." He left the farmer counting his change, and turned to his reports. "Another money-grubber gone crazy with the heat," he muttered. "If I'd his wad wouldn't I burn this wire with one hot, short sentence!"
Harris met his son on the platform. "What d'ye think, Dad? A letter from Riles." He drew the crumpled missive from its envelope. "Looks like a laundry ticket," he said, "but I figured it out, and he wants you to sell the farm and buy a coal mine."
Harris read the letter through, not without some difficulty. At first he was inclined to laugh, but the earnestness of Riles impressed him through the makeshift English.
"What d'ye think of it, Dad?" said the younger man, at length. "Of course we don't know anything about coal, but then—"
"It must look good to Riles or he wouldn't want to put any money in it," commented Harris, after a few minutes' reflection. "Riles is pretty cautious. He's got money in the bank drawin' three per cent; he's afraid to lend it out among the farmers. And he ain't easy talked into a new scheme, either."
"D'ye suppose we could sell the farm?" The idea of a big, profitable speculation suddenly appealed to Allan with much greater force than the prospect of three years on a homestead. He knew that vast sums of money had been made, and made quickly, in the Far West, but he had never before thought of himself or his father sharing in this sudden wealth. They had worked hard for their money, and took it as a matter of course that they should continue to work hard for it. But the vision of quick riches, the prospect of realizing it in his own person, the dizzy thought that Fortune, which had seemed to move in a circle quite apart from his existence, might actually now be within a hand's reach—these intoxicated him with a sudden hope which burst the old bounds of his imagination and set up new and wilder ambitions.
"D'ye suppose we could sell the farm?" he repeated. It began to seem that the short-cut to wealth hinged on the possibility of selling the farm.
"I guess we could sell it, all right," said Harris. "Maybe not for that much cash, but we can get cash on the agreement, if we need it." He, too, found the inborn gaming instinct which cries out for money without labour welling within him and surging up against his long-established, sober judgment. But he was not a man to act precipitately, or risk all on a single throw unless he were very, very sure of the result.
"Of course, maybe it's all right," he continued. "But it's a good thing to buy your buggy before you throw away your cart. If this thing's as good as Riles says, it will keep until we can see it for ourselves. If it don't, somethin' else'll turn up."
"Yes," said Allan, "but if we find it's all right when we get there, and we've only a few measly hundred dollars along, we'll want to kick ourselves all the way home. Lots of fellows are making big money just because they had some capital to work with, and why shouldn't we do it, too? Couldn't you fix it some way to get the money without coming back, if everything looks all right? That'd save time, and expense too."