Читать книгу The Enchanted Hill (Western Novel) - Peter B. Kyne - Страница 8

Table of Contents

“Who is Jake Dort?” Gail queried when, an hour later, she and Purdy sat down to breakfast.

“Jake is the range boss of the Box K Ranch. Good cow-hand, too. Ira Todd thinks a lot of him, and I imagine he thinks a lot of Ira Todd. Jake felt, I dare say, that it was up to him to prove his fealty to his boss.”

“Do you mean, seriously, that Jake Dort is an employee of mine?”

“He’s the range boss of the Box K Ranch. I wasn’t aware that you own the Box K Ranch, but if you do, Jake Dort is most certainly on your pay-roll.”

“I do own the Box K Ranch, and Ira Todd is my manager. And I shall exercise my prerogative as owner to sever Mr. Dort from the ranch pay-roll very promptly.”

“Are you quite certain you have sufficient money to pay him off?”

The girl looked at him, startled. “That is a very—very—leading question, isn’t it?” she queried a little coldly. “I wonder why you ask it.”

“I do not mean to be inquisitive or rude, but I have heard a persistent rumor to the effect that Jake is several months overdue on his wages, and I know of my own knowledge that the account of the Box K Ranch at the bank in Arguello is overdrawn.”

“I—I didn’t know that. How did you learn it?”

“I’ve a friend who is a director of that bank. Please forgive me for discussing your private affairs. I didn’t think you did know it, hence I thought it only decent to spare you the embarrassment of firing Jake only to have him back-fire on you. I’ve had to discharge a few men in my day and I have always found it most convenient to pay them off in full when I say good-by.”

Gail looked at her host humorously. “I fear Jake is going to remain on the pay-roll indefinitely, Mr. Purdy. And of course that means I shall have to be very civil to him when next we meet.”

“It’s terrible to be poor.”

“How do you know? You aren’t poor,” Gail protested.

“Oh, yes, I am! I’ve been broke for a year.”

“But you own a huge cattle ranch.”

“I own an equity in it,” he corrected, “and equities in real estate are not comforting assets in time of national financial disaster. I have to earn money to meet my payments on account of the principal of the mortgage, and yesterday I sent to market three hundred steers that weren’t any more ready for market than the market is ready for them. But I’ve got to meet my interest. I’ve noticed that where the security is ample and the interest is kept paid, holders of mortgages are not so apt to foreclose, even when the mortgage is past due.”

“Is the entire cattle business in the same slough of despond?”

“It is, Miss Ormsby—at least in the Southwest. There has been drought in Texas and Arizona and with short feed it has been necessary to market the aged stuff at whatever price it will bring; there has been a wild scramble to unload feeders at starvation prices on cattlemen in New Mexico, Colorado, California and Nevada who have range to take care of them. But the banks will not lend money on cattle this year and the cattle loan companies are holding all the cattle paper they want; they cannot discount it and they have to carry it. Nobody seems to have any confidence in the business and the market price for beef is below the cost of production.”

“Then the situation is truly desperate?”

“Truly. For instance, Bill Canfield, who ranges over on the Santa Margarita, is so broke he creaks when he gets off his horse. And yet a year ago Bill could borrow fifty thousand dollars without an indorser and without collateral. About a month ago Bill received word from the station agent at Arguello that the latter was holding for him, thirty-five dollars c. o. d., an express package containing a pair of fancy boots he had ordered before the panic from the best bootmaker in Kansas City.

“Now Bill needed those boots very badly, but he didn’t have a cent of cash money to pay for them. Nobody else had any, so he couldn’t borrow on the strength of his heart-breaking story; his notes were past due at the bank, so he was out of luck there, and when he tried selling some saddle-horses nobody would buy them. He was about to commit suicide or hold up a train when he happened to recall that he had on hand quite a collection of dry hides. Hides had been accumulating on his ranch for years, so he piled them all on a wagon and drove down to Arguello. Dry, warped and contrary cowhides are hard to load on a wagon and thirty of them make a load bigger than a jag of hay. Bill had fifty and on his way to town he had to trim his cargo fifty times. But still he was happy, for in the good old war days he had been accustomed to receive three dollars each for prime hides; and he brought nothing but prime hides to town with him. Surely he would be able to get a dollar and a half each for them now!

“Alas! The local dealer wouldn’t even make him a bid and rather than take them back to the ranch he sawed them off on a Jew peddler who had never dealt in hides before but was willing to try anything once. He paid Bill twenty-five cents per hide, which left Bill ten dollars short of the amount necessary to get his boots out of the express office. So Bill sat in at a twenty-five-cent limit game of poker and played the best poker he knew.

“By sundown he was twelve dollars to the good, so he cashed in and, it being a neighborly little game, accepted a friend’s check for twenty-five dollars on an Albuquerque bank, returning thirteen dollars change. The station agent would accept the check for collection only, however, so Bill sat around town until the bank at Albuquerque wired non-payment because of insufficient funds. Meanwhile the drawer of the check had spent the thirteen dollars change and the fatal telegram was the first intimation he had that his bank would no longer honor a small overdraft. Of course, he offered to secure Bill with his horse and outfit, but Bill had all the assets of that sort he needed. What he wanted was cash.

“So there he was, marooned in Arguello, with his old boots practically gone and his remaining funds fast disappearing. Finally it occurred to him to borrow the money from our friend Chan. Of course the thrifty little Celestial had it to loan and Bill got his boots out of chancery and went home, but his experience will indicate to you the financial straits to which cow-men in these parts have been reduced.”

“But why didn’t Bill Canfield sell some of his cattle?” Gail queried. “It seems such an unbelievable tale!”

“He couldn’t sell a single head. They’re all mortgaged to the Southwest Cattle Loan Corporation, and if Bill had sold mortgaged property without their consent and used the money to buy a pair of boots, he would have been a felon under the law.”

“The cattle of the Box K Ranch are mortgaged to that same loan company, Mr. Purdy,” Gail confessed.

“Don’t preen yourself over that, Miss Ormsby. Four thousand head of my cattle dwell under the same plaster. I was able to hold out a thousand head of aged stuff they didn’t know anything about, else they would have insisted upon my including that lot in their security, after the value of cattle had so depreciated they could claim their security had fallen below a reasonable margin of safety.”

“How fortunate you were to escape that! The Box K Ranch borrowed in order to buy more cattle, and when the note fell due the loan company threatened to foreclose unless we gave them additional security. We couldn’t meet the note so we gave the additional security.”

“I’m sorry about that, Miss Ormsby. I had a sneaking impression that they might learn of the thousand head I kept in my winter pasture when I turned the other stock loose on the summer range. So I rushed them to market before I could receive a visit from the loan company’s agent. He’ll be here in a day or two with his polite ultimatum, only to discover that the additional security he hopes to scare out of me has been sold. I shipped the last of the lot yesterday.”

“Will they then foreclose on the other four thousand head? Or are you fortunate in that your note is not due for some time?”

“My note is overdue but the Southwestern Cattle Loan Corporation will not foreclose—not this year.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m too wary a bird to be beguiled into flying into that outfit’s cage and permitting them to close the door on me. Had Ira Todd been as wary he would not have given those loan sharks a first chattel mortgage on your hitherto unmortgaged stock; he made the mistake of accepting the agent’s verbal promise that the note would be renewed for two years. The promise, it seems, was not made in the presence of witnesses, so now the corporation may, if it desires, repudiate its agent’s alleged promise and make demand upon you for payment of the note in, say, thirty days’ time; otherwise foreclosure proceedings will be instituted.”

Gail Ormsby gazed with new interest upon the sage of La Cuesta Encantada. “How did you ascertain that?” she demanded. “Ira Todd only wired me that news three days ago, and I came here at once to see what could be done about it.”

“I didn’t know it, Miss Ormsby. I didn’t even know your cattle had been mortgaged until you voluntarily disclosed the fact. But when you added that Todd had acquiesced in their demand for additional security, I guessed at once the trap into which you had fallen. The Southwestern Cattle Loan Corporation is owned by a coterie of bankers who in their ordinary banking affairs dislike cattle loans for two reasons: There is an element of risk to them and the rate of interest which they dare charge is not as high as a non-banking institution can exact. Also, as the Southwestern Cattle Loan Corporation, they can do things which as bankers they would be afraid to do and which, if done, would put them out of business as bankers.

“Understand me, Miss Ormsby. Ordinarily this loan corporation would not put up this dirty job on you, but nothing makes greedy or money-loving men so cowardly and contemptible as a threatened loss. Realizing that this very human characteristic lies sleeping but never dead in the souls of all money-lenders, I made up my mind the moment the post-war deflation developed into an international panic to make these people shoulder their burden of risk in so far as I was concerned; to force them to carry me and not sacrifice me to their greed and timidity. I think I have succeeded in doing just that.”

“I wish Ira Todd had been as shrewd.”

Purdy smiled. “Well, Ira Todd isn’t a Yankee and I am. Todd is a product of these wide, unsullied spaces, where, theoretically, men are men, whereas I come from Worcester, Massachusetts, a city given over in the main to textile manufacturing, close figuring, keen bargaining, child labor and a horizon largely limited by factory chimneys. Life is harder, closer, colder there. Do not blame Ira Todd for not having been as shrewd as you think I have been. He has been accustomed all of his life to sealing a bargain with a hand-shake. Where I come from we like to seal it before a notary public; we make a virtue of being orderly and practical.”

“I greatly fear,” Gail answered sadly, “I did not meet you soon enough. Now, with Mr. Todd unable—as I dare say he will be—to attend to business for a few weeks, I—I—I—well, it’s going to be terribly embarrassing.”

Her voice quavered ever so slightly; Lee Purdy glanced at her with quick sympathy; from his ever ready humor and resourcefulness the quiet, prescient little smile was born and brought to the girl a sense of comfort and safety.

“It is an ill wind,” he assured her, “that doesn’t blow somebody good. I think that Chinaman will in the long run prove to have been a divinely appointed agent, in that, by his action in placing Ira Todd on sick report for a month, you are given a free hand in the management of your property. Would you care to have me advise you—in the absence of Ira Todd?”

“I shall be tremendously grateful if you will.”

“In which event I shall be sufficiently rewarded. Now, then, my advice to you is to cross your bridges when you come to them. What you need more than money is time—time to grow out your cattle and make them more valuable, even at the present ruinous price of beef; time to estimate the situation; time to permit the country to recover its accustomed financial balance and insure a profitable market for your cattle; time to descend upon the Southwestern Cattle Loan Corporation and move its hard corporate heart to a reconsideration of the verbal promise of its agent; time to take stock of your other assets and realize on them, sacrificing them, if need be, to save your property here, or sacrificing your property here to protect your other assets. Just at present your handicap lies in an appalling lack of time to do anything.”

“Well, of course, in a real pinch I can sell the ranch and the cattle, pay the cattle mortgage and have something left.”

He gazed at her solemnly. A man would have realized that he doubted her ability to unload under fire, but did not care to disturb her by expressing his doubt too frankly.

“Yes, that is possible,” he admitted. “If you contemplate a sale of your ranch, however, it would be well to dispose of it as soon as you decide that you cannot pay your cattle mortgage—and that the cattle loan company will not extend your note.”

“Please tell me why.”

“Suppose,” he continued, “that when the Southwestern Cattle Loan Corporation shall have foreclosed on all of your cattle; when those cattle shall have been bought in by a secret agent of the Southwestern Cattle Loan Corporation at the sheriff’s sale for, say, two cents a pound on the hoof, when they are worth not less than five cents at a sacrifice—that the Southwestern Cattle Loan Association finds itself with a deficiency judgment against you and proceeds to levy against your ranch! What then?”

“That would be too preposterous for consideration, Mr. Purdy. What with the additional cattle pledged, the security is ample to repay the loan, even at a sacrifice sale. Mr. Todd says so.”

“Fortunately Mr. Todd lies in the railroad hospital at Arguello with a dent in his ingenious head and I have taken over his job of advising you. Now, I assure you, Miss Ormsby, the hypothetical situation I have sketched for you is not only possible, but something tells me it is extremely probable. If your ranch is worth a hundred thousand dollars and a creditor should secure a deficiency judgment against it for five thousand dollars, and you should be unable to protect your property at the sheriff’s sale, then your ranch will be sold for five thousand dollars to satisfy that judgment. If nobody should bid against your creditor the court would assume that your ranch was worth only five thousand dollars, and accordingly the sale would be confirmed.”

“But I could sell the property first and pay the deficiency judgment afterward.”

“You might not receive very much for it if people knew that you were forced to sell it in order to pay a deficiency judgment,” he reminded her. “And a cattle range is absolutely unsalable on short notice even at a sacrifice and particularly at a time like the present.”

“Thank goodness no such impasse presents itself in my case, Mr. Purdy. I can sell my interest to Mr. Doak, who is the attorney who settled my Uncle Aleck’s estate. I inherited the Box K Ranch from him.”

There was a sudden silence while Lee Purdy salted and peppered his fried eggs. Then: “How long is it since Mr. Doak made you that offer?”

“A week ago. In fact, his offer constituted another reason why I thought I ought to come down here and investigate the property.”

“Would I be too inquisitive—as your adviser—if I asked what sum he offered you?”

“He did not mention any sum. He said he would take a flyer in it, entirely as a gambling proposition, at the value at which the property had been appraised after Uncle Aleck’s death.”

Abruptly Purdy changed the conversation. “Have you ever done any flying?”

“Once, as a passenger. I paid ten dollars for the thrill.”

“Like it?”

“Very much indeed.”

“Good! Right after breakfast I’ll roll out a two-seater and we’ll fly to your ranch and look things over. With Ira Todd absent and you present, I may dare to land in that alfalfa field.”

“Oh, great! I shan’t be the least bit afraid.”

“She’s a steady, dependable old bus, and in the event of a forced landing I can come down in El Valle de los Ojos Negros. The vegetation there is stunted sage in spots and very sparse and we can taxi over it without going on our nose. The secret of safe flying is altitude. If you’re up twenty thousand feet and the motor stalls, you can volplane ten or fifteen miles and pick your landing.”

“This will be a lark!”

“Have you by any chance riding breeches, boots and sweater in your trunk?”

The girl nodded.

“Wear them,” he commanded. “I’ll fix you up with a fleece-lined leather coat and helmet and furnish a fur robe to wrap around your legs.”

“Major Purdy, you’re the shadow of a rock in a weary land,” Gail declared. “Now you have taken away my appetite for breakfast.”

“It does appear that we are to have a fairly busy and exciting day,” he agreed. “We’ll be back in time for luncheon. After luncheon I’ll hop into Arguello and leave you here to entertain Hallie. She doesn’t leave her bed until noon.”

Gail reflected that another man would have informed her that he would leave her at the ranch to be entertained by Hallie! Here, she reflected, was a man who thought straight and talked straight. She fell to studying his face in repose, to pondering about him, as she nibbled at her toast and sipped a cup of coffee. Purdy appeared to sense her desire for silence, for thereafter he forbore intruding upon her mental privacy. And for this she liked him, too. He could talk earnestly, sincerely, entertainingly and at length when he had something to discuss; when he had nothing to discuss he preferred silence. Gail concluded he was not a man given to small talk or the making of pretty speeches to women. Well-mannered and well-bred, he would have been at home in any drawing-room, yet he preferred his own simple abode here in the lonely solitude of this land of magnificent distances.

She wondered how old he was and deduced that he might be anywhere between twenty-eight and forty. He was about six feet tall, big-boned, with just sufficient flesh on his frame to spell the difference between curves and angles. He was not a handsome man; his features were too rugged, too characterful for that; he gave one an impression of manly wholesomeness, of one hundred per cent masculinity, of tolerance, gentleness, understanding. During the early-morning visit of Jake Dort and his braves she had seen that he was a man of ready wit, calm, resourceful, cunning and courageous, but not offensively so. He did not flaunt his he-mannishness to the world, but hid it behind natural and inherited good breeding. Gail assured herself that whatever of good or of evil this man might accomplish, it would be done deliberately, sanely and without regret for its accomplishment.

She liked him too for his tender attitude toward Hallie. When he had carried her light frail form from the living-room to her bedroom the night before, there had been paternity more than fraternity in his action; surely he must have been a man grown when Hallie was a baby. Not that he looked it and not that he looked boyish, either. Gail detected in his face and manner a maturity that comes, not so much from the living of years as from years of living. Very early in life, Gail thought, this man had had his illusions shattered in contact with men who “played for keeps.”

Instinctively there rose in Gail Ormsby’s heart a hot resentment against Todd, the man she had never met.