During the days that followed he brooded over this, avoiding his family as much as possible, while they, wondering when the first prospector would return and what conversation or arrangement Queeder had had with the second, watched him closely. At last he was all but unbalanced mentally, and by degrees his mind came to possess but one idea, and that was that his wife, his children, the world, all were trying to rob him, and that his one escape lay in flight with his treasure if only he could once gain possession of it. But how? How? One thing was sure. They should not have it. He would fight first; he would die. And alone in his silent field, with ragged body and mind, he brooded over riches and felt as if he already had them to defend.
In the meanwhile the first prospector had been meditating as to the ease, under the circumstances, with which Queeder’s land could be taken from him at the very nominal price of two thousand, considering the secrecy which, according to Queeder’s own wish, must attach to the transfer of all moneys over that sum. Once the deed was signed—the same reading for two thousand—in the presence of the wife and a lawyer who should accompany him, how easy to walk off and pay no more, standing calmly on the letter of the contract!
It was nearing that last day now and the terrible suspense was telling. Queeder was in no mental state to endure anything. His hollow eyes showed the wondering out of which nothing had come. His nervous strolling here and there had lost all semblance of reason. Then on the last of the sixty allotted days there rode forward the now bane of his existence, the original prospector, accompanied by Attorney Giles, of Arno, a veritable scamp and rascal of a lawyer.
At first on seeing them Queeder felt a strong impulse to run away, but on second consideration he feared so to do. The land was his. If he did not stay Dode and Mrs. Queeder might enter on some arrangement without his consent—something which would leave him landless, money-less—or they might find out something about the extra money he had taken and contracted for, the better price he was now privately to receive. It was essential that he stay, and yet he had no least idea as to how he would solve it all.
Jane, who was in the doorway as they entered the yard, was the one to welcome them, although Dode, watchful and working in a nearby patch, saluted them next. Then Mrs. Queeder examined them cynically and with much opposition. These, then, were the twain who were expecting to misuse her financially!
“Where’s your father, Dode?” asked Attorney Giles familiarly, for he knew them well.
“Over thar in the second ’tater patch,” answered Dode sourly. A moment later he added with rough calculation, “Ef ye’re comin’ about the land, though, I ’low ez ’twon’t do yuh no good. Maw an’ Paw have decided not tuh sell. The place is wuth a heap more’n whut you all’re offerin’. They’re sellin’ land roun’ Arno with not near ez much min’l onto hit ez this hez for three hundred now, an’ yuh all only wanta give two thousan’ fer the hull place, I hyur. Maw’n Paw’d be fools ef they’d agree tuh that.”
“Oh, come now,” exclaimed Giles placatively and yet irritably—a very wasp who was always attempting to smooth over the ruffled tempers of people on just such trying occasions as this. “Mr. Crawford here has an option on this property signed by your mother and father and witnessed by a Mr.”—he considered the slip—“a Mr. Botts—oh, yes, Lester Botts. You cannot legally escape that. All Mr. Crawford has to do is to offer you the money—leave it here, in fact—and the property is his. That is the law. An option is an option, and this one has a witness. I don’t see how you can hope to escape it, really.”
“They wuzn’t nuthin’ said about no min’l when I signed that air,” insisted Mrs. Queeder, “an’ I don’t ’low ez no paper whut I didn’t know the meanin’ uv is goin’ tuh be good anywhar. Leastways, I won’t put my name onto nuthin’ else.”
“Well, well!” said Mr. Giles fussily, “We’d better get Mr. Queeder in here and see what he says to this. I’m sure he’ll not take any such unreasonable and illegal view.”