“So you won't sell to Mr. Milburn, then?” asked Dolly, humbly grateful for her father's change of mood.
“Sell to that old dough-faced scamp?” snorted Barclay. “Well, he 'll think I won't in a minute! Do you reckon I don't want to have some sort o' finger in the pie? Whether the road's built or not, I want my chance.”
“But remember I am giving away state secrets,” said Dolly. “He must not know that you have heard about the road.”
“I 'll not give that away,” the old man promised, with a smile, and he turned to the door as if eager to face Milburn. “Huh! That old scamp coming here to do me one! The idea!”
The two men, as they faced each other a moment later, presented an interesting study of human forces held well in check. The Colonel leaned on the mantel-piece and looked down at the toe of his boot, with which he pushed a chunk of wood beneath the logs.
“You never can tell about a woman' s whims, Mil-burn,” he said. “Dolly's set her heart on holding onto that land, and I reckon I'm too easily wriggled about by my women folks. I reckon we'd better call it off.”
“Oh, all right—all right!” said Milburn, with a start and a sharp contraction of his brows. “I'm that away some myse'f. My gals git me into devilish scrapes sometimes, an' I'm always sayin' they got to stop it. A man loses too much by lettin' 'em dabble in his business. But I was jest goin' to say that I mought raise my bid fifty cents on the acre ruther than trapse away over to Springtown to see Buford.”
There was silence through which several kinds of thoughts percolated. The raise really amounted to so much that it materially increased Barclay's growing conviction that the railroad was next to a certainty. “Huh!” he grunted, his eyes ablaze with the amusement of a winner. “I wouldn't listen to less than a dollar more on the acre.” And as the gaze of Milburn went down reflectively the Colonel winked slyly, even triumphantly, at his smiling daughter and said: “Dolly thinks it will make good land for a peach-orchard. Lots of money is being made that way.”
“Bosh!” grunted Milburn. “It don't lie right fer peaches. You kin git jest as much property nigh the railroad as you want fer peaches. You are a hard man to trade with, but I reckon I 'll have to take yore offer of—”
“Hold on, hold on!” laughed the Colonel, his hand upraised. “I didn't say I'd take that price. I just said I wouldn't listen to less than a dollar raise. I've listened to many a thing I didn't jump at, like a frog in muddy water, not knowing what he's going to butt against.”