After all, Queeder’s second signature or mark would be required, peaceably if possible, and besides they wished no physical violence. They were men of business, not of war.
“Yuh say he agreed tuh take $8,000, did he?” queried Dode, the actuality of so huge a sum ready to be paid in cash seeming to him almost unbelievable.
“Yes, that’s right,” replied the prospector.
“Then, by heck, he’s gotta make good on whut he said!” said Dode with a roll of his round head, his arms akimbo, heavily anxious to see the money paid over. “Here you,” he now turned to his father and began—for his prostrate father, having fallen and injured his head, was still lying semi-propped on his elbows, surveying the group with almost non-comprehending eyes, too confused and lunatic to quite realize what was going on or to offer any real resistance. “Whut’s a-gittin’ into yuh, anyhow, Ol’ Spindle Shanks? Git up hyur!” Dode went over and lifted his father to his feet and pushed him toward a chair at the table. “Yuh might ez well sign fer this, now ’at yuh’ve begun it. Whar’s the paper?” he asked of the lawyer. “Yuh just show him whar he orter sign, an’ I guess he’ll do it. But let’s see this hyur money that ye’re a-goin’ tuh pay over fust,” he added, “afore he signs. I wanta see ef it’s orl right.”
The prospector extracted the actual cash from a wallet, having previously calculated that a check would never be accepted, and the lawyer presented the deed to be signed. At the same time Dode took the money and began to count it.
“All he has to do,” observed Giles to the others as he did so, “is to sign this second paper, he and his wife. If you can read,” he said to Dode when the latter had concluded, and seeing how satisfactorily things were going, “you can see for yourself what it is.” Dode now turned and picked it up and looked at it as though it were as simple and clear as daylight. “As you can see,” went on the lawyer, “we agreed to buy this land of him for eight thousand dollars. We have already paid him eight hundred. That leaves seven thousand two hundred still to pay, which you have there,” and he touched the money in Dode’s hands. The latter was so moved by the reality of the cash that he could scarcely speak for joy. Think of it—seven thousand two hundred dollars—and all for this wretched bony land!
“Well, did yuh ever!” exclaimed Mrs. Queeder and Jane in chorus. “Who’d ’a’ thort! Eight thousan’!”
Old Queeder, still stunned and befogged mentally, was yet recovering himself sufficiently to rise from the chair and look strangely about, now that Dode was attempting to make him sign, but his loving son uncompromisingly pushed him back again.
“Never mind, Ol’ Spindle Shanks,” he repeated roughly. “Just yuh stay whar yuh air an’ sign as he asts yuh tuh. Yuh agreed tuh this, an’ yuh might ez well stick tuh it. Ye’re gittin’ so yuh don’t know what yuh want no more,” he jested, now that he realized that for some strange reason he had his father completely under his sway. The latter was quite helplessly dumb. “Yuh agreed tuh this, he says. Did ja? Air yuh clean gone?”
“Lawsy!” put in the excited Mrs. Queeder. “Eight thousan’! An’ him a-walkin’ roun’ hyur all the time sayin’ hit wuz only two an’ never sayin’ nuthin’ else tuh nobody! Who’d ’a’ thort hit! An’ him a-goin’ tuh git hit all ef he could an’ say nuthin’!”