Читать книгу Oil! - Upton Sinclair - Страница 38

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There was Dad’s voice, calling Bunny; so he said good-bye, and ran down the arroyo. Dad was sitting in the car. “We’re a-goin’ in to Paradise,” he said. “But first, change them oil shoes.” Bunny did so, and put the shoes away in the back of the car. He hopped in, and they drove down the lane, and Dad remarked, with a cheerful smile, “Well, son, we own the ranch.”

Dad was amused by the game he had just played, and told Bunny about it, overlooking the possibility of complications in Bunny’s feelings. Dad had tactfully begun talking to Mr. and Mrs. Watkins about the family’s lack of bread, and that had started Mr. Watkins telling the whole situation. There was a sixteen hundred dollar mortgage against the ranch, with nearly three hundred dollars interest overdue, and they had got a final notice from the bank, that foreclosure proceedings would begin next week. So Dad had explained that he wanted a place for summer camping, where his boy could have an outdoor life, and he would buy the ranch at a fair price. Poor Mrs. Watkins began to cry—she had been born on this place, it seemed, it was her homestead. Dad said she didn’t need to worry, they might stay right on, and have all the farming rights of the place, he would lease it to them for ninety-nine years at ten dollars a year. The old man caught Dad’s hand; he had known the Lord would save them, he said. Dad decided that was a good lead, so he explained that the Lord had sent him, according to the revelation of the True Word; after which Mr. Watkins had done jist whatever the Lord had told Dad to tell him to do!

And J. Arnold Ross had put the affairs of that family in order, you bet—there would be no more nonsense of giving away their money to missionaries! The Lord had told Dad to tell Mr. Watkins that he was to use his money to feed and clothe and educate his children. The Lord had furthermore told him that the equity in his land was not to be paid in cash, but was to consist of certificates of deposit in a trust-company, which would pay them a small income, about fifteen dollars a month—a lot better than having to pay the bank nearly ten dollars a month interest on a mortgage! Moreover, the Lord had directed that this money was to be held in trust for the children; and Bunny’s friend Paul could thank Dad for having saved him a share. Mr. Watkins had said that one of his sons was a black sheep, and unworthy of the Lord’s care, but Dad had stated it as a revelation of the True Word that there was no sheep so black but that the Lord would wash it white in His own good time; and Mr. Watkins had joyfully accepted this revelation, and he and his wife had put their names to a contract of sale which Dad had drawn up. The purchase price was thirty-seven hundred dollars, which had been Mr. Watkins’ own figure—he had said that this hill land was worth five dollars an acre, and he figured his improvements at five hundred. They weren’t really worth that, they were a lot of ruins, Dad said, but he took the old man’s valuation of them. The contract provided that Mr. Watkins was to have water sufficient to irrigate two acres of land, which was jist about all he had under cultivation now; of course, Dad would give him more, if he could use it, but Dad wouldn’t take no chance of disputes about water-rights. In the morning Mr. and Mrs. Watkins would drive out to Paradise, and Dad would hire a four-passenger car there, and drive them to some other town, where they could put the matter into escrow without too much talk.

In the meantime, Dad was on his way to Paradise, to set the town’s one real estate agent to work buying more land for him. “Why don’t you send for Ben Skutt?” asked Bunny; but Dad answered that Ben was a rascal—he had caught him trying to collect a commission from the other party. And anyhow, a local man could do it better—Dad would buy him with an extra commission, let Bunny watch and see how it was worked. Fortunately, Dad had taken the precaution to bring along a cashier’s check for three thousand dollars. “I didn’t know jist how long we might camp,” he said, with his sly humor.

So they came to an office labelled, “J. H. Hardacre, Real Estate, Insurance and Loans.” Mr. Hardacre sat with his feet on his desk and a cigar in his mouth, waiting for his prey; he was a lean, hungry-looking spider, and was not fooled for an instant by Dad’s old khaki hunting-clothes—he knew that here was money, and he swung his feet to the floor and sat right up. Dad took a chair, and remarked on the weather, and asked about the earthquake, and finally said that he had a relative who wanted to live in the open for his health, and Dad had jist bought the Abel Watkins place, and he jist thought he’d like to raise goats on a bigger scale, and could he get some land adjoining? Mr. Hardacre answered right away, there was a pile of that hill-stuff to be had; there was the Bandy tract, right alongside—and Mr. Hardacre got out a big map and began to show Dad with his pencil, there was close to a thousand acres of that, but it was mostly back in the hills, and all rocks. Dad asked what it could be bought for, and Mr. Hardacre said all that hill-stuff was held at five or six dollars an acre. He began to show other tracts, and Dad said wait now, and he got a paper and pencil and began to jot down the names and the acreage and the price. Apparently everything around here could be bought—whenever the man failed to include any tract, Dad would ask “And what about that?” and Mr. Hardacre would say, “That’s the old Rascum tract—yes, I reckon that could be got.” And Dad said, “Let’s list them all,” and a queer look began to come over Mr. Hardacre’s face—it was dawning upon him that this was the great hour of his life.

“Now, Mr. Hardacre,” said Dad, “let’s you and me talk turkey. I want to buy some land, if it can be got reasonable. Of course as soon as people find you want it, they begin to boost the price; so let’s get that clear, I want it jist enough to pay a fair price, and I don’t want it no more than that, and if anybody starts a-boostin’ you jist tell ’em to forget it, and I’ll forget it, too. But all the land you can buy reasonable, you buy for me, and collect your commission from the seller in the regular way, and besides that, you’ll get a five percent commission from me. That means, I want you to be my man, and do everything you can to get me the land at the lowest prices. I don’t need to point out to you that my one idea is to buy quick and quiet, so people won’t have time to decide there’s a boom on. You get me?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Hardacre. “But I’m not sure how quietly it can be done; this is a pretty small place, there’s lots of talk, and it takes time to put through a deal.”

“It won’t take no time at all if you jist handle it my way and use good sense. You don’t mention me, you do the buyin’ for an unknown client, and you buy options for cash—that means, if the people are hereabouts, you close the deals right off.”

“But that’ll take quite a bunch of money,” said Mr. Hardacre, a little frightened.

“I got a little change in my pocket,” said Dad, “and I brought a cashier’s check for three thousand, that I can turn into cash in the mornin’. You see, Mr. Hardacre, I happen to be jist crazy about quail shootin’, and I had the idea that if I found plenty of quail, I’d get a little land to shoot over. But get this clear, I can shoot quail on one hill jist as good as on the next—and I don’t let nobody mistake me for a quail!”

Dad took out of his card-case a letter from the president of a big bank in Angel City, advising whomever it might concern that Mr. James Ross was a man of large resources and the highest integrity. Dad had two such letters, as Bunny knew—one in the name of James Ross and the other in the name of J. Arnold Ross; the former was the one he used when he bought oil lands, and no one had ever yet got onto his identity in time!

Dad’s proposition was this: He would make a contract with Mr. Hardacre, whereby Mr. Hardacre was authorized to buy ten-day options upon a long list of tracts, of specified acreage and at specified prices, paying five percent upon the purchase price for each option, and Dad agreeing to take up all these options within three days, and to pay Mr. Hardacre five percent on all purchases. Mr. Hardacre, torn between anxiety and acquisitiveness, finally said he guessed he’d take a chance on it, and if Dad threw him down, it would be easy for him to go into bankruptcy! He sat at his rusty typewriter and made two copies of the agreement, with a long list of tracts that were to cost Dad something over sixty thousand dollars. They read that over twice, and Dad signed it, and Mr. Hardacre signed it with a rather shaky hand, and Dad said fine, and counted out ten one hundred dollar bills on the desk, and said for Mr. Hardacre to get to work right away. He would do well to have his options all ready for the other party to sign, and Dad thought he had some blanks in the car—he wasn’t jist sure, but he’d see. He went out, and Mr. Hardacre said to Bunny, quite casual and friendly-like, “What is your father’s business, little man?” And Bunny, smiling to himself, answered, “Oh, Dad’s in all kinds of business, he buys land, and lots of things.” “What other things?” And Bunny said, “Well, he has a general store, and then sometimes he buys machinery, and he lends money.” And then Dad came back; through a stroke of good fortune he happened to have a bunch of option blanks in his car—and Bunny smiled to himself again, for he never yet had seen the time when Dad did not happen to have exactly the right document, or the right tool, or the right grub, or the right antiseptic and surgical tape, stowed away somewhere in that car!