Queeder looked at him for the moment as if he suspected treachery, and then seeing the gathered family surveying them from the distant doorway he made the newcomer a cabalistic sign.
“Come over hyur,” he said, leading off to a distant fence. At the safe distance they halted. “I tell yuh just how ’tis,” he observed very secretively. “Thar wuz a feller come along hyur three er four weeks ago an’ at that time I didn’t know ez how this hyur now wuz min’l, see? An’ he ast me, ’thout sayin’ nuthin’ ez tuh whut he knowed, whut I’d take for it, acre fer acre. Well, thar wuz anuther feller, a neighbor o’ mine, had been along hyur an’ he wuz sayin’ ez how a piece o’ land just below, about forty acres, wuz sold fer five thousan’ dollars. Seein’ ez how my land wuz the same kind o’ land, only better, I ’lowed ez how thar bein’ seventy acres hyur tuh his forty I oughta git nearly twicet ez much, an’ I said so. He didn’t ’low ez I ought at fust, but later on he kind o’ come roun’ an’ we agreed ez how I bein’ the one that fust had the place—I wuz farmin’ hyur ’fore ever I married my wife—that ef any sale wuz made I orter git the biggest sheer. So we kind o’ fixed it up b’tween us, quiet-like an’ not lettin’ anybody else know, that when it come tuh makin’ out the papers an’ sich at the end uv the sixty days he was to gimme a shade the best o’ the money afore we signed any papers. Course I wouldn’t do nuthin’ like that ef the place hadn’t b’longed tuh me in the fust place, an’ ef me an’ my wife an’ chil’n got along ez well’s we did at fust, but she’s allers a-fightin’ an’ squallin’. Ef he come back hyur, ez he ’lowed he would, I wuz t’ have eight thousan’ fer myself, an’ me an’ my wife wuzta divide the rest b’tween us ez best we could, her to have her third, ez the law is.”
The stranger listened with mingled astonishment, amusement and satisfaction at the thought that the contract, if not exactly illegal, could at least to Queeder be made to appear so. For an appeal to the wife must break it, and besides because of the old man’s cupidity he might easily be made to annul the original agreement. For plainly even now this farmer did not know the full value of all that he had so foolishly bartered away. About him were fields literally solid with zinc under the surface. Commercially $60,000 would be a mere bagatelle to give for it, when the East was considered. One million dollars would be a ridiculously low capitalization for a mine based on this property. A hundred thousand might well be his share for his part in the transaction. Good heavens, the other fellow had bought a fortune for a song! It was only fair to try to get it away from him.
“I’ll tell you how this is, Mr. Queeder,” he said after a time. “It looks to me as though this fellow, whoever he is, has given you a little the worst end of this bargain. Your land is worth much more than that, that’s plain enough. But you can get out of that easily enough on the ground that you really didn’t know what you were selling at the time you made this bargain. That’s the law, I believe. You don’t have to stick by an agreement if it’s made when you don’t understand what you’re doing. As a matter of fact, I think I could get you out of it if you wanted me to. All you would have to do would be to refuse to sign any other papers when the time comes and return the money that’s been paid you. Then when the time came I would be glad to take over your whole farm at three hundred dollars an acre and pay cash down. That would make you a rich man. I’d give you three thousand cash in hand the day you signed an agreement to sell. The trouble is you were just taken in. You and your wife really didn’t know what you were doing.”
“That’s right,” squeaked Queeder, “we wuz. We didn’t ’low ez they wuz any min’l on this when we signed that air contrack.”
Three hundred dollars an acre, as he dumbly figured it out, meant $21,000—twenty-one instead of a wretched eight thousand! For the moment he stood there quite lost as to what to do, say, think, a wavering, element-worn figure. His bent and shriveled body, raked and gutted by misfortune, fairly quivered with the knowledge that riches were really his for the asking, yet also that now, owing to his early error and ignorance in regard to all this, he might not be able to arrange for their reception. His seared and tangled brain, half twisted by solitude, balanced unevenly with the weight of this marvelous possibility. It crossed the wires of his mind and made him see strabismically.
The prospector, uncertain as to what his silence indicated, added: “I might even do a little better than that, Mr. Queeder—say, twenty-five thousand. You could have a house in the city for that. Your wife could wear silk dresses; you yourself need never do another stroke of work; your son and daughter could go to college if they wanted to. All you have to do is to refuse to sign that deed when he comes back—hand him the money or get his address and let me send it to him.”
“He swindled me, so he did!” Queeder almost shouted now, great beads of sweat standing out upon his brow. “He tried tuh rob me! He shan’t have an acre, by God—not an acre!”
“That’s right,” said the newcomer, and before he left he again insinuated into the farmer’s mind the tremendous and unfair disproportion between twelve (as he understood Queeder was receiving) and twenty-five thousand. He pictured the difference in terms of city or town opportunities, the ease of his future life.
Unfortunately, the farmer possessed no avenue by which to escape from his recent duplicity. Having deceived his wife and children over so comparatively small a sum as eight thousand, this immensely greater sum offered many more difficulties—bickering, quarreling, open fighting, perhaps, so fierce were Dode and his wife in their moods, before it could be attained. And was he equal to it? At the same time, although he had never had anything, he was now feeling as though he had lost a great deal, as if some one were endeavoring to take something immense away from him, something which he had always had!