"We've got some good news, too," McWade a.s.serted. "Avenger Number One is trying hard to come in."

"No?"

"I tell you Gray's got a rabbit foot. If we continue to trail along with him, I'll be losing you as a partner, Brick."

"How so?"

"Why, I'll be turning honest. It seems to pay."

"Um-m. Probably I'd better keep all this Nelson money and leave you--"

"Oh, not at all," the junior partner said, quickly. "That isn't an oil deal, strictly speaking, for you say there ain't oil enough on the land to grease a jackknife. I look on it as a real-estate speculation."

With a laugh Stoner accepted this explanation, and then announced that he was hungry for his breakfast.

This time Mallow spoke up. "I'm bally-hooing for a new joint; Fulton's Fancy Waffle Foundry. Follow me and I'll try to wedge you in. But you'll have to eat fast and pick your teeth on the sidewalk, for we need the room." In answer to Stoner's stare, the speaker explained his interest in the welfare of Wichita Falls's newest eating place, and en route thereto he told how Margie Fulton came to be running it. "Gray did it. He got the Parker girl to help us, and we had the place all fixed up by the time Margie got here. She's tickled pink, and it'll coin money--if it isn't pinched."

"Pinched?"

"Sure! Bennie's the cashier, and he palms everything from dimes to dishtowels. Force of habit! Better count your change till I break him of short-changing the customers."

"_You_--" Stoner stopped in his tracks.

"Oh, I'm giving him lessons in elemental honesty."

"My G.o.d! Are you turning honest, too?" the other man exclaimed. "Seems like that's all I hear lately."

It was a blue day for Henry Nelson when Avenger Number One came in, for it made necessary immediate drilling operations on his part. And the worst of it was the well was not big enough to establish a high value for his holdings. It was just enough of a producer to force him to begin three offsets and that, for the moment, was an undertaking decidedly inconvenient.

Bell Nelson was even more dismayed at the prospect than was his son, for upon him fell the necessity of raising the money. "h.e.l.l of a note,"

the old fellow grumbled, "when a wet well puts a crimp in us! A little more good luck like this and we'll go broke."

"We can't afford to let go, or to sub-lease--"

"Of course not, after the stand we've taken. There's talk on the street about the bank, now, and--I'd give a good deal to know where it comes from." The junior Nelson had heard similar echoes, but he held his tongue. "I never did like your way of doing business," the speaker resumed, fretfully. "We've overreached. You wanted it all and--this is the result."

Now Henry Nelson was warranted in resenting this accusation, for it had ever been Bell's way to pursue a grasping policy, therefore he cried, angrily:

"That's right; pa.s.s the buck. You know you wouldn't listen to anything else. If we're in deep, you're more to blame than I."

"Nothing of the sort." Old Bell began a profane denial, but the younger man broke in, irritably:

"I've never won an argument with you, so have it your own way. But while you're raising money for the Avenger offsets, you'd better raise plenty, for Gray is going to punch holes down as fast as ever he can."

"Who is this Gray? What's he got against you?"

Henry's eyes shifted. "Has he got anything against me? He bought a good lease and was wise enough to get somebody to make a well for him--"

"Those crooks! Those wildcatters!"

"Now, he proposes to develop his acreage as rapidly as possible.

Nothing strange about that, is there?"

"Is he sore at you?"

"We didn't get along very well in France."

"Humph! I suppose that means you fought like h.e.l.l. And now he's getting even. By the way, where am I going to get this money?"

"That is up to you," said Henry, with a disagreeable grin, whereupon his father stamped into his own office in a fine fury.

Not long after this father and son quarreled again, for of a sudden a perfect avalanche of lawsuits was released, the mysterious origin and purpose of which completely mystified Old Bell. The Nelsons, like everybody else, had unsuccessfully dabbled in oil stocks and drilling companies for some time before the boom started, also during its early stages, and most of those failures had been forgotten. They were painfully brought to mind, however, when Henry was served with a dozen or more citations, and when inquiry elicited the reluctant admission from the bank's attorney that a genuine liability existed--a liability which included the entire debts of those defunct joint-stock a.s.sociations in which he and his father had invested. This was enough to enrage a saint.

Henry argued that he had invariably signed those articles of a.s.sociation with the words, in parentheses, "No personal liability,"

and he was genuinely amazed to learn that this precaution had been useless. He protested that scores--nay, hundreds--of other people were in the same fix as he, and that if this outrageous provision of the law were strictly enforced and judgments rendered widespread ruin would result. His lawyer agreed to this in all sympathy, but read aloud the provisions of the statute, and Nelson derived no comfort from the reading. The lawyer was curious to know, by the way, who had taken the trouble to acquire all of these claims--a task of heroic size--but about all the encouragement he could offer was the probability of a long and expensive series of legal battles, the outcome of which was problematical. That meant annoyance, at best, and a possible impairment of credit, and the Nelson credit right now was a precious thing, as Henry well knew. Eloquently he cursed the day he had met Calvin Gray.

What next, he wondered.

He discovered what next when the driller he had sent up to Arkansas in charge of his rig one day came into the office in great agitation. The man's story caused his employer's face to whiten.

"_Salted!_ I--don't believe it." Nelson seized his head in his hands.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" he gasped. Misfortunes were coming with a swiftness incredible. Salted! Victimized, like the greenest tenderfoot! A small fortune sunk while the whole country was still chuckling over the Jackson scandal! This _was_ a nightmare.

Henry was glad that his father was in Tulsa in conference with some other bankers over that Avenger offset money, otherwise there was no telling to what extreme the old man's rage would have carried him at this final calamity. And that whining, coughing crook, that bogus farmer, was in Arizona--or elsewhere--out of reach of the law! The younger Nelson turned desperately sick. If this was not more of Gray's work, it was the direct result of the curse he had called down.

"Does anybody know?" Henry inquired, after he had somewhat recovered his equilibrium.

"n.o.body but us fellows."

"You--you mustn't shut down. You've got to keep up the bluff until--until I get time to turn."

"You going to b.u.mp off that land to somebody else?"

"What do you think I'm going to do?" Nelson was on his feet now and pacing his office with jerky strides. "Take a loss like that?" He paused and glared at the bearer of bad tidings, then growled: "What are you grinning about? Oh, you needn't say it. You want yours, eh? Is that it?"

"Well--it's worth something to turn a trick like this."

"How much?"

"It's a big deal. It'll take something substantial--something substantial and paid in advance--to make our boys forget all the interesting sights they've seen. But I'd rather leave the amount to you, Henry. You know me; I wouldn't be a party to a crooked deal, not for anything, except to help you out--"

"How much?" the banker repeated, hoa.r.s.ely.

But the field man merely smiled and shrugged, so, with a grunt of understanding, Henry seated himself and wrote out a check to bearer, the amount of which caused him to grind his teeth.

Now it was impossible to dispose of a large holding like that Arkansas tract at a moment's notice. In order to evade suspicion, it was necessary to go about it slowly, tactfully, hence the financier moved with as much circ.u.mspection as possible. His careful plans exploded, however, when he met Calvin Gray a day or so later.

Gray had made it an invariable practice to speak affably to his enemy in pa.s.sing, mainly because it so angered the latter; this time he insisted upon stopping. He was debonair and smiling, as always, but there was more than a trace of mockery in his tone as he said: