Part 26 (1/2)
”It was one of the little things which count the most,” said Boone.
Thereupon the woman's olive-tinted face flushed into warmer color, while her long-limbed spouse observed: ”She's of the French habitant stock, and their ways of showing they haven't forgotten aren't the same as ours.”
Breakfast was set before us, and I think Boone had made firm friends of our hosts before we finished the meal. He had abilities in this direction. They, on their part, were very simple people, the man silent for the most part, rugged in face, and abrupt when he spoke, but shrewd in his own way it seemed withal, and probably as generous as he was hard at a bargain. His wife was of the more emotional Latin stock, quick in her movements, and one might surmise equally quick in sympathy.
”You are not the man who bought the place at the sale,” said Boone, at length. ”I can remember him tolerably well, and, if I couldn't, one would hardly figure you were likely to work under Lane.”
”No!” and the farmer laughed his curious laugh again. ”No. I shouldn't say. We never worked for any master since my grandfather got fired for wanting his own way by the Hudson's Bay, and I guess neither Lane nor the devil could handle the rest of us. He once came round to try.”
”How?” I asked, and the gaunt farmer sighed a little as he filled his pipe. ”This way. He was open to finance me to buy up a poor devil's place, and if I'd had a little less temper and a little more sense I might have obliged him, and landed a good pile of money, too.”
”He's just talking. Don't you believe him,” broke in the woman, with an indignant glance at her spouse.
I fancied Boone saw the drift of this, which was more than I did, and the farmer nodded oracularly in his direction when I asked: ”What did you do instead?”
”Just reached for a big ox-goad, and walked up to him like a blame millionaire or a hot-headed fool. Them negotiations broke right off, and he lit out across the prairie talking 'bout a.s.saults and violences at twenty mile an hour. Some other man will know better, and that's just how Lane will get badly left some day.”
The woman laughed immoderately. ”It was way better'n a circus,” she said. ”He didn't tell you he rammed the ox-goad into the skittish horse, and Lane he just hugged the beast.”
The picture of the full-fledged Lane, who made a very poor figure in the saddle at any time, careering panic stricken across the prairie with his arms about the neck of a bolting horse appealed to me; but as to the possibility of the usurer's future discomfiture I was still in the dark, and asked for enlightenment.
”It's easy,” said the farmer. ”Lane he squeezes somebody until he can't hold on to his property, then he puts up the money and another man buys the place dirt-cheap for him, in his own name. Suppose that man goes back on Lane? 'This place is my own,' says he. Well, he's recorded owner, isn't he? and I figure Lane wouldn't be mighty keen on dragging that kind of case into the courts.”
”But he wouldn't put any man in unless he had him by the throat,” said I; and the farmer grinned.
”Juss so! He'll choke some fellow with grit in him a bit too much some day, and when the wrong breed of scoundrel is jammed right up between the devil and the sea, it's quite likely he'll go for the devil before he starts swimming.”
”I”--and Boone regarded the farmer fixedly--”quite agree with you. Do you mind telling me what you gave for this place?”
Our host named the sum without hesitation, adding that he would be glad to show us over it; and Boone's face grew somber as he said: ”It is more than twice what it was sold for when it was stolen from me.”
We walked around the plowed land, inspected the stock, stables, and barns, and when, after a cordial parting with our hosts, we rode away, Boone turned to me: ”It was an ordeal, and harrowing to see what might have been but for an insatiable man's cunning and my poverty. Another half-hour of the memories would have been too much for me. Well, we can let that pa.s.s. They were kind souls, and this last lesson may have been necessary. Strange, isn't it, that the simple are sometimes shrewder than the wise?”
”For instance?” I said; and Boone smiled significantly.
”Yonder very plain farmer has. .h.i.t upon a weak spot in Lane's armor which the keenest brain on this prairie--I don't mean my own, of course--has. .h.i.therto failed to see.”
Soon afterwards we separated, each going his different way.
CHAPTER XIX
THE WORK OF AN ENEMY
Whatever action the police took concerning Lane's descent upon Crane Valley was not apparent, and Thorn may have been justified in deciding that they took none at all. However that may have been, Lane left us in peace for a while, and it was not by his own hands that the next bolt was launched against me. He preferred, as a rule, to strike through another person's agency, and usually contrived it so that when trouble resulted the agent bore the brunt of it.
I was tramping behind the seeder one fine morning, alternately watching the somewhat unruly team and the trickle of golden grain into the good black loam, when two hors.e.m.e.n appeared on the prairie. They headed for the homestead, and living in a state of expectancy, as we then did, I shared the misgivings of Thorn. ”They're coming our way in a hurry, sure; and the sight of anyone whose business I don't know worries me just now,” he said.
”If it's bad news we'll learn it soon enough,” I said. ”Go on to the end of the harrowing. That we'll have a frost-nipped harvest if we're not through with the sowing shortly is the one thing certain.”