“I reckon you can tell Mr. Lockwood about it,” said Louise. “It’s all among friends.”
“Shorely. Well, then—did you ever hear of Pascagoula Oil?”
Lockwood shook his head, foolishly imagining some brand of motor lubricant.
“It’s an oil mine—an oil well—down on the coast, somewhere round Pascagoula way. They’re keepin’ it dark; only a few folks in it; but they’ll be pumpin’ millions of gallons of oil directly. They’re pumpin’ some now. Hanna knew all about it from the start, an’ he got us in on the ground floor.”
“I see,” said Lockwood, with heavy foreboding. Louise was watching his face anxiously.
“Do you know much about the well?”
“Shorely we do. We know all about it.” He went into the next room and brought back a bundle of papers. “Look yere. Photografts of it, from their first drillin’ up to now. Here’s the story of the whole thing, tellin’ how much oil there is, an’ everything. Take this stuff away with you an’ read it, if you wanter.”
Lockwood glanced over the badly printed prospectus1, and the pictures, which might have been pictures of an oil derrick anywhere.
“So Mr. Hanna got you in on the ground floor, did he?” he said slowly. “Have you got much stock in it?”
“Well, that’s the worst of it. We couldn’t git enough. Only fifty shares, five thousand dollars. Hanna’s got a wad of it, near three thousand shares, I reckon. Oh, it’s all right—don’t have no suspicion about that, sir. Why, it’s payin’ dividends2 right now. Yes, sir! Five per cent every quarter—twenty per cent a year. We’ve got back already near a thousand of what we put in.
“And that ain’t all! We could git double for our shares what we paid for ’em. I know we could. I’ve had letters askin’ me to sell, offerin’ all sorts of prices. I sold once. Yes, sir, just to see that it was genuine I sold one of my hundred-dollar shares, an’ got two hundred dollars for it. What do you think about that? Some investment, eh?”
“Yes, it does sound good,” said Lockwood. “But, Tom, if I were you I’d go down there and see the oil wells myself, before I put any more money into the thing.”
“I did speak to Hanna about going down,” said Tom. “He didn’t seem to want to go much. Say,” he added, with an inspiration. “Supposin’ you an’ me go, eh? We’ll stop in Mobile, an’ have a hell of a time. It won’t cost you a cent. You know all about Mobile, I reckon?”
“I know it a little.”
“You know, I never was in Mobile but once, an’ then I was with Hanna, an’ we didn’t have no fun. I reckon you an’ me, we’d have a better time by ourselves.”
He poked3 Lockwood in the ribs4. Lockwood glanced at Louise, who was smiling faintly.
“Sure we’ll go, Tom!” he said. “Just as soon as work slacks up a little at the camp. By the way, you’d better not say anything to Hanna about it.”
“You bet!” returned Tom, winking5. “Likely I hadn’t oughter told you nothin’ about this yere oil mine. He said I wasn’t to let it out. But it’ll be all right. Most likely he’d have told you himself later.”
“Just between friends,” suggested Lockwood gravely, and Tom innocently assented6.
Lockwood carried a memory of Louise’s anxious smile as he rode away. He thought that he had got at the heart of Hanna’s scheme at last. A fake oil well—the crudest of swindles, but good enough to impose upon these unsophisticated children of the big swamps. Easy also to expose!
The position looked plain; the only problem was as to how he should attack it. Hanna’s standing7 in that house was far more solid than his own; the boys liked him, but they would believe Hanna first. Louise indeed might trust him; passionately8 he wished it might be so. But he could not interfere9 in this game until he knew the cards in his own hands. He felt confident of the fraud that was being practiced, but he would have to have the proof. He would have to go to Pascagoula, either with Tom Power or alone.
Then would come the exposure, the explosion, possibly the killing10. The Power boys themselves would be quick enough to resent being victimized, and from stories he had heard they had drawn11 pistols before. But the exposure would almost certainly involve his own exposure. Louise would learn that he had been in prison.
He shrank hotly from that revelation. He thought it over all the next day, while he sweated about the smoking still, and the day after while he rode the woods. He hung back from visiting the Powers; he hesitated to act.
He saw the house boat as usual that afternoon, still moored12 where he had first found it, where he had since seen it almost every day. To-day, he heard a sound of voices in strong altercation13 on the house boat, and guessed that the thieves had fallen out. He approached the bayou, his horse treading softly on the pine needles and mold, pulled up just beyond the line of willows14, and listened.
Nobody was in sight ashore15 or aboard the boat, but a sound of quarreling came out violently through the open, glassless windows of the cabin. He could scarcely distinguish a word, but he almost immediately recognized one of the voices as that of Jackson Power.
He was startled and shocked. At least two other voices joined, but they were so intermingled that he could make out nothing. Then Jackson burst out clearly:
“I won’t do it. I ain’t had——”
“You cayn’t prove nothin’!” interrupted another.
“Then let him do it, ef he——”
The voices dropped again to confused wrangling16. Once more they rose to angry
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