Offut said, patiently repeating the words until he had command of their attention again.
Ballou's attention switched to another part of the room. The long, angular frame of his companion of the mesa, Bill, towered in the doorway and tried to wedge himself through the packed crowd. He motioned to Lin and nodded his head vigorously several times. Offut, meanwhile, had calmed the mob somewhat.
"You folks are impatient. Lin Ballou is as straight as a string. As honest as I am. I'll vouch for him, and if you know my reputation that must count for something. He has been my agent—the agent of the cattle committee. He had to make himself out a crook to catch other crooks. It is due to him that we've got the Chattos—one dead, one alive—and that we can put Lestrade in prison. You boys owe Lin an apology."
This was a poser. Coming from such a man as W. W. Offut it was not to be lightly challenged. Offut had never in his life been anything but square and they knew it. There and then the animus of the mob seemed to lose its strength, the members of it recollecting their better senses. Lin Ballou stepped down from the rostrum, caught hold of Bill's onward reaching arm and by sheer strength pulled him through the last rank of the crowd.
"Tell me in a hurry. What's the answer? How'd you get back so sudden?"
"I thought I'd better speed things," Bill whispered, "so I dropped off at Pinto and used the telegraph. Got an answer to the effect that we was authorized to just about write our own ticket. Now you get up there and spill it. It'll be happy news for somebody."
Ballou stepped back to the rostrum and faced the waiting crowd. "Let me have a word in this controversy. You folks had better forget Lestrade and let him take what the judge hands him. Which will sure be plenty. I know you folks are out a pile and I can just about tell you why. Lestrade never wanted to finish that irrigation scheme. If he knows as much about the land in this valley as I do—and I think he does—he wanted to get hold of it for himself."
"Heck of a lot of good he'll get from it," Colqueen muttered, for once losing his faith in the land.
"As far as farming goes, that's right," Lin agreed. "Yo boys who were at the dance that time will remember I bucked like a steer at the idea of water. Why? Because this country can't afford it. But there is something under all this sand and alkali that's worth forty thousand farms."
That caught the crowd's attention. Every last man craned his neck.
"You boys thought I was an awful fool frittering my time away, prospecting for gold. And I would have been a fool, sure enough, if gold was what I wanted. But it wasn't. Bill here—" he motioned to the lanky youth—"is a geologist. The best in this man's state. He's employed by the Alamance Mineral Corporation. Guess you know that name, don't you?"
Very few didn't. It ranked as the largest mining concern in the state. Even W. W. Offut turned his head when he heard the name, and watched Lin closely.
"Well, the sum and substance of it is," Lin went on, enjoying the suspense, "that Bill and I have been all over the valley floor, poking little holes in the ground. That's a sideline nobody knows anything about. As a result I can announce with a right smart amount of satisfaction that this valley is underlaid with what may be the richest bed of potash in America."
There was a sound as if a gust of wind had passed through the room. Hank Colqueen shook his head several times. W. W. Offut began to smile, a rare thing for him.
"Now potash," Lin proceeded, "is a mighty valuable thing. I'm no teacher, but I might say it's so valuable that most of it comes from Europe. Bill tells me to say that the Alamance Mineral Corporation is ready—if all tests are as good as those we have made—to stand back of a development of these beds to the fullest extent. That means we'll prosper. That's all I've got to say, except to point out that this is probably the reason Lestrade wanted to break all you folks and take the land himself."
"Lestrade and Judge Henry—" Colqueen started to break in with a last dying spark of rebellion.
"Judge Henry had nothing to do with it," Lin Ballou said. "Lestrade worked him. You ought to be able to figure that out."
A voice came from the rear of the crowd. Lin saw Judge Henry standing unsteadily in the doorway, one arm holding to his daughter. "Boys, boys, if you think I'm a crook, I'll turn over any profit I make to you. It ain't much, because I'm stuck as deep as the rest, but whatever comes from the Henry place is yours."
The crowd roared—not with resentment this time, but with approval. Those nearest the judge slapped him on the back. Hank Colqueen disappeared in the sea of bobbing faces, no more to be seen. Lin jumped from the rostrum and fought his way through the mass until he was beside Gracie. The girl seemed on the point of crying. Whether it was from happiness or sorrow Lin could not tell, until she looked up to him and smiled, lips trembling.
"Oh, Lin, I'm so glad folks know you're straight—as I've known so very, very long."
"What made you come here?" Lin demanded. "Into all this grief?"
In a few words she told him of Lestrade's visit. "After that," she said, "Dad saw settlers going toward Powder and he decided to face them immediately. You don't know what a strain it's been and how glad I am it's all over."
"I think," he said, growing red, "that I really ought to get a reward."
"What?"
"I think you should go home and bake me another apple pie."
"Oh," she said in a disappointed tone. "Is that all?"
"Well," Lin said, "that will be all until I get you in the kitchen where all these yahoos won't be looking."
And that night as the stars came out and the coyotes sent forth their quivering challenge, Powder settled again into its somnolence, with another chapter added to its brief but vivid history. Out in the bleak graveyard they buried Beauty Chatto and Dan Rounds, side by side, while the jail held three miserable, defeated men—Nig Chatto, James J. Lestrade, and Tracy the turn-coat. They were fit company for one another.
And over in Judge Henry's house, supper was past and the judge had the ranch to himself. Lin and Gracie had driven to that long deserted homestead of Lin's. It seemed Gracie wanted to take measurements for new curtains.
FREE GRASS
Table of Contents