This was more than a local story; it was big enough for the wire. Gray sat at the editor's elbow while that enthusiastic gentleman called Dallas and gave it to the papers there.

He was escorted to the railroad station by an admiring crowd; he was cheered as he pa.s.sed, smiling, into his Pullman car.

CHAPTER VII

Coverly was at the station when Gray's train arrived at Dallas the next morning. He was suffering intense excitement, and he deluged his friend with a flood of questions, meanwhile flourishing the morning papers, all of which appeared to have devoted much s.p.a.ce to the Ranger episode.

He hugged Gray, and he pumped his hand; he laughed and he chattered; he insisted upon hearing the whole story without delay. On their way uptown, the returning hero gave it to him, together with Gus Briskow's check.

At the size of the latter Coverly gasped. "Didn't I say you were a good salesman? And Mallow! You got him, didn't you? I _told_ you he was a crook. Just the same, old man, you ran a terrible risk and I feel mighty guilty. Why, those fellows would have killed you."

"Probably."

"Why didn't you take along a policeman or somebody?"

"And miss all the fun? Miss my pay for the trip? I agreed to take my commission in thrills."

The jeweler was frankly curious. "Weren't you frightened?"

"Frightened? No." Gray shook his head. "I've never been really afraid of anything or anybody, so far as I recall. I've never been able to understand the necessity of being frightened. I dare say the capacity for enjoying that particular emotion was omitted from my make-up--the result of some peculiar prenatal influence, probably. I'm sorry, too, for fear must have a fascination and I like unusual sensations."

"Speaking of your commissions, how am I going to pay you--not for the sale you made, although I wouldn't have done as well, but for the loss you saved the firm and for the risk you ran?"

Gray felt a momentary desire to have done with pretense, to confess his true condition and to beg not only a suitable reward for his services, but also as large a loan as Coverly could spare. It is hard to maintain an att.i.tude of opulence on less than nothing; it would be so much easier to have done with this counterfeit gesture and trust to a straightforward appeal. But he dared not yield to the impulse.

"You may give me anything you see fit," he declared, "and I sha'n't embarra.s.s you by refusing. On the contrary, go as strongly as you possibly can."

Coverly actually appeared to be relieved at this statement, but he inquired, curiously: "What have you got up your sleeve? You don't need money."

"Obviously not. But I know a needy object of charity; a worthy case, I a.s.sure you. I can scarcely call him a friend, but I used to admire him greatly, and he is still an agreeable companion--a man at once capable, extravagant, entertaining, dissipated. He is in a bad way, temporarily, and can scarcely afford even the bare necessities of life. It is only with my help, in fact, that he maintains its luxuries. Your money shall go to him, and with every dollar of it that he squanders, there shall arise an earnest orison to you."

The jeweler was delighted. "Good!" he cried. "I detest the deserving poor as heartily as you do. And now I'd like to open a bottle of champagne with our breakfast."

On the very day that the new sign, "Tom and Bob Parker," went up over the door of the insurance office at Wichita Falls, the junior partner announced:

"Well, dad, the firm gets busy at once. I'm off for Dallas to-night."

"What for?" Tom was dismayed by such a prompt manifestation of energy.

"I'll have to tell you--" Barbara perched herself upon her father's desk and began speaking with a note of excitement in her voice. "I heard Henry Nelson was in town, so I went to the bank this morning to see him. He's such a big man in the oil business I thought he might help me. He was there, but in conference with his father and another man. There were several people waiting, so I sat down. When the man they were talking to came out, it was Pete, that driller who put down the first well for us. He was glad to see me, and we had quite a talk, but I noticed he was fidgety. He said he was running a rig over near 'Burk,' and had a fishing job on his hands. With all the excitement and everybody running double 'towers' and trying to beat the other fellow down to the sand, it struck me as queer that a contract driller like Pete would be here in Wichita in conference with Bell and Henry Nelson, when he ought to be out on the lease fishing for a lost bit. It didn't sound right. The more I got out of him, the queerer it sounded, for he had all the fishing tools he needed, so I accused him of being a fraud.

I told him I'd bet he had a showing of oil and was trying to borrow money to buy the offset or to get the Nelsons to buy it and carry him for an interest."

"Where'd you pick up this lingo?" Tom inquired. "You talk like them wild men at the Westland Hotel."

Barbara laughed delightedly. "Didn't I put down all our shallow wells?

If I didn't, I thought I did. Anyhow, I spent most of my time around the rigs and Pete used to call me his boss. Well, that wretched man turned all colors when I accused him, and tried to 'shush' me. He said I mustn't talk about things I knew nothing about--somebody might overhear me. He declared the outfit he was working for were no good and wouldn't pay a driller a bonus if he made a well for them. He was sick of making other people rich and getting nothing for himself.... It was time the drilling crews shared in the profits.... He'd see that n.o.body froze him out again if he had to spoil the hole. He wound up by denying everything, and I pretended to swallow it, but when he had gone I went over my maps and located the lease where he's drilling. Three of the adjoining tracts are owned by the big companies, so that eliminated them, but the twenty to the west belongs to Knute Hoaglund. Henry was glad to see me when my turn came to go in, and--"

"I bet he was glad," Tom declared.

Barbara's smooth cheeks flushed faintly. "He is too busy and too rich to--think about girls."

"He wasn't too busy and too rich to inquire about you 'most every day since he got back from the war."

"I didn't forget to call him 'Colonel,' and that pleased both him and Bell. Then I told them that I proposed to become a rich and successful oil operator and wanted their advice how to begin. Old Bell was amused, but Henry--I beg pardon, _Colonel_--Nelson was shocked. He couldn't bear to think of women, and of me especially, in business. He might have become disagreeably personal if his father hadn't been there."

"Dunno's I care much for Henry," Tom said, mildly.

"Oh, he's all right, but--I _hate_ Bell! It makes anybody mad to be laughed at. Henry was more diplomatic. He tried to convince me that the oil game is altogether a man's business and that no woman could succeed at it. 'It is a contest of wits,' he explained. 'You've got to outguess the other fellow. You've got to know everything he's doing and keep him from knowing anything you're doing. The minute he knows as much as you do, he's got it on you.' That seemed to prove to Henry that no woman could win at it, for men are such superior creatures. They know so much more than a woman can possibly learn; their wits are so much keener!

"I was duly impressed. I asked him to call this evening, for I did so wish to have him teach me what little I was capable of learning. But he couldn't come, because he had been called to Dallas, unexpectedly. That was my cue. In my most sweetly girlish manner I said: 'Oh, indeed! Do you expect to see Knute Hoaglund while you're there?'"

Two hectic spots had come into "Bob's" cheeks during this recital; she was teetering upon the desk now like a nodding j.a.panese doll, and her blue eyes were dancing.

"I heard Old Bell's chair creak and I saw him shoot a quick glance at Henry. Henry admitted, casually, that he might drop in on Knute. Why?"

"'You'll be wasting time,' I told him, even more sweetly, 'for dad and I have that twenty west of Burkburnett.'

"_Well!_ You'd have thought I had stuck a hatpin into Bell. And Henry's mouth actually dropped open. Think of it: Colonel Henry Nelson, the hero of Whatever-it-is, with his imperial mouth open and nothing coming out of it--not even the imperial breath!"

"Bob" rocked backward and kicked up her neatly shod feet; she hugged herself and snickered with a malicious enjoyment not wholly Christian-like.

"But--we 'ain't even got an option! It takes _money_ to lease close-in stuff." Tom was bewildered.

"Of course. And they realized that, or Bell did, as soon as he'd had time to collect himself. But it was too late then; he had betrayed himself and he knew it. Oh, he was sore! He'd have flung me out if I'd been a man. I got mad, too, and I told him it made no real difference whether I was bluffing or not; the jig was up, so far as he was concerned. I reminded him of what Henry had just said--that the oil business is a game of wits, and that when you know what the other fellow is doing you have him licked. I admitted that he could probably keep me from getting the lease, but I could also keep him from getting it. Bell nearly had a stroke at that threat. Henry behaved very decently throughout. I think it must have pleased him to find that somebody in Wichita, besides him, had the courage to defy his father; anyhow, he said, '"Bob" has beaten us at our own game. She knows enough now to place that lease in half an hour, and I think we'd better take her in. Otherwise she'll wire Knute, and he'll probably protect her for an interest.'

"That made me feel awfully fraudulent, but his smarty remarks about women in the oil business still rankled, so I just sat pretty and blinked like a little owl. Bell swore. In his best and most horrible manner, he swore, but--he gave in." "Bob" laughed again, a bit hysterically. "That's about all, dad. They agreed to put up the money and carry me--us, I mean--for a quarter interest if I can get the lease from Knute Hoaglund. So, I'm leaving on the night train."

"Son! I--I'm darned if I don't believe we'll make a go of this business," Tom Parker declared.

With a little cry Barbara flung herself into his arms.

The publicity Calvin Gray received from his exploit at Ranger could be nothing except agreeable to one of his temperament. Gratefully he basked in his notoriety, meanwhile continuing a.s.siduously to cultivate the moneyed men of Dallas. His sudden leap into prominence aroused curiosity among the wives and families of the latter, and he became the recipient of some social attentions. He accepted every invitation, and so well did he carry himself in company, so ornamental and engaging was he as a dinner guest, that he was soon in great demand. He possessed accomplishments, too, that increased the respect of his masculine acquaintances. For instance, he displayed a proficiency at golf quite unusual in men of athletic training, and they argued that any man who could do par whenever he felt like it must be either a professional or a person of limitless leisure. And limitless leisure means limitless funds.

Gray studiously maintained his air of financial mystery; he was in and out of offices, always purposeful, always in a hurry, but always with sufficient time to observe the strictest niceties of polite behavior.

It was a part of his plan to create an atmosphere of his own, to emphasize his knack for quick, decisive, well-calculated action. The money he received from Coverly enabled him to maintain the posture he had a.s.sumed; he spent it with his usual prodigality, receiving little direct benefit, but making each dollar look like four. Extravagance with him was an art, money ran out of his pockets like water, but although he was already in a position to borrow, he did not do so. He merely marked time, deriving a grim amus.e.m.e.nt at the way his popularity grew as his currency dwindled. It was a game, enjoyable so long as it lasted. Egotistical he knew himself to be, but it was a conscious fault; to tickle his own vanity filled him with the same satisfaction a cat feels at having its back rubbed, and he excused himself by reasoning that his deceit harmed n.o.body. Meanwhile, with feline alertness he waited for a mouse to appear.

He was relieved one day to receive a telegram from Gus Briskow asking him to meet Ma and Allie at the evening train and "get them a hotel."

He managed to secure a good suite at the Ajax, and it was with genuinely pleasurable antic.i.p.ation that he drove to the station.

Dismay smote him, however, at first sight of the new arrivals. Ma Briskow resembled nothing so much as one of those hideous "crayon enlargements" he had seen in farmhouses--atrocities of an art long dead--for she was clad in an old-fashioned basque and skirt of some stiff, near-silk material, and her waist, which b.u.t.toned far down the front and terminated in deep points, served merely to roof over but not to conceal a peculiarity of figure which her farm dress had mercifully hidden. Gray discovered that Ma's body, alas! bore a quaint resemblance in outline to a gourd. A tiny black bonnet, with a wide surcingle of ribbon tied under her chin, was ornamented with a sort of centerpiece built of rigid artificial fruit and flowers. Her hair, in brave defiance of current styles, was rolled into a high pompadour. Beneath that pompadour, however, her face was aglow with interest and her eyes gleamed almost as brightly as did the brand-new lavalliere and the bar pin with its huge six-carat center diamond.

If the mother's appearance was unusual, the daughter's was startling, what with her size and the barbaric lat.i.tude of color she had indulged herself in. Allegheny's get-up screamed. In the general store at Cisco, whence it had originated, it had doubtless been considered a sport costume, for there was a skirt of huge blue and white checks, a crepe waist of burnt orange, and over that a vegetable-silk sweater, with the broadest, greenest stripes Gray had ever seen. A violent, offensive green, it was; and the sweater was too tight. Her hat was large and floppy and adorned with preposterous purple blooms; one of her hands was gloved, but upon the other she wore her splendid solitaire. She "shone" it, as a watchman shines his flashlight.

They were enough to daunt a stronger man than Calvin Gray, these two.

He could well imagine the sensation he and they would create in the lobby of the modish Ajax. But his first surprise was succeeded by a gentle pity, for Ma Briskow greeted him rapturously, and in Allegheny's somber eyes he detected a look of mingled suffering and defiance. She knew, somehow or other, that she was conspicuous, grotesque, and her soul was in agony at the knowledge. Before he had spoken a half dozen words to her, Gray realized that this girl was in torture, and that it had required a magnificent courage on her part to meet him as bravely as she did. He was ashamed of himself; amus.e.m.e.nt at their expense did him no credit, and he determined to relieve her pain and to help her attain the likeness of other women if it was in his power to do so. It was a tribute to his inherent chivalry that he rose to the occasion and welcomed the women with a cordiality that warmed their hearts.

Enthusiastically he took charge of Ma's lunch basket; against Allie's muttered protest he despoiled her of her bilious, near-leather suitcase; he complimented them upon their appearance and showed such pleasure at seeing them again that they surrendered gratefully to him.

By the time he had them in a taxicab they were as talkative as a pair of magpies.