“Well,––maybe I am wrong, but it looks to me as if the West were going mad and that there will be one wild, hilarious fling and then––the deluge.
“God help daddy, Brenchfield or anybody else who gets caught in the maelstrom.
“Phil,––promise me one thing;––you won’t get caught in this? Buy and sell for others if you wish. Yes!––gamble with a little if you have it to spare, but you won’t,––promise me you won’t get involved in this awful business in such a way that a turn of the tide would leave you broken and dishonoured.”
“I never was lucky in mines, oils or land, Eilie, dear;––and you have my promise. If ever I have anything to do with real estate, believe me, it will be simply––as you suggest––in buying and selling for the other fellow. That game has always had a great fascination for me.”
“Why, yes!––you can get all the excitement without the far-reaching consequences. But what worries me 318 about daddy is that he has so many unfinished ends lying everywhere. That was always his weakness; now it seems to be his obsession. He has ranches stocked with the best animals in the country. He has the best implements, but he has no real record of them and they disappear all the time. Some of his foremen are getting marvellously well-to-do suddenly. Why, the other day a man brought in a herd of pigs and sold them to daddy for cash. The pigs were daddy’s own––stolen from one of his ranches the night before––and daddy didn’t know them. Last spring, one of his foremen told daddy, just before the snow went, that they would require new machinery for this particular ranch he was working; ploughs, reapers, binders, et cetera. Dad ordered them for him and, when the snow went, he discovered all kinds of the same machinery there which had been left lying out all winter and simply ruined––really enough machinery to work a dozen ranches.”
“And didn’t he fire the foreman?”
“Not he! He said he couldn’t put a married man out in that way. And that same married man came in here penniless four years ago, has been working for dad all the time for wages; and he could retire to-morrow and live on the interest of his invested capital.
“Daddy Royce Pederstone doesn’t see it at all. He says some men are lucky speculators. Oh,––it makes me furious!”
In that short drive to town Phil got confirmed in a great many things he had previously considered merely gossip and conjecture.
At the entrance to Eileen’s home he handed over the reins.