“Drop that pen!” thundered Mr. Gordon, and Miss Hope let it fall as though it had burned her fingers. “I’ll give you fifteen thousand dollars,” he said more gently.
Fluss looked at Blosser who nodded.
“Seventeen thousand,” he shrieked, as though the sisters were deaf. “Seventeen I tell you, seventeen thousand!”
“Twenty,” said Mr. Gordon cheerfully.
Miss Charity suddenly found her voice.
“I think we’d better sell to Mr. Gordon,” she announced quietly.
CHAPTER XXIV
UNCLE DICK’S BUYER
Miss Hope, who had been wringing her hands, bewildered and hopelessly at sea, hailed this concrete suggestion with visible relief.
“All right, Sister, I think so, too,” she agreed, glad for once not to have to make the decision. “You’re sure you are not cheating yourself, Mr. Gordon, by paying us twenty thousand dollars?”
Mr. Gordon, who had strolled over to the door leading into the hall, assured her that he was well-satisfied with his bargain.
“Well, we’ll be going,” muttered Blosser. “All this comes from trying to do business with women. You had as good as passed us your word that you’d sell to us, and see what’s happened. However, women don’t know nothing about ethics. Come on, Fluss.”
He was too disappointed and angry to notice the slip of his tongue, but Fluss flushed a brick red.
“Just one minute,” said Mr. Richard Gordon, blocking the doorway. “You don’t leave this place until you promise to produce that boy.”
Blosser feigned ignorance, but the attempt deceived no one.
“What boy?” he blustered. “You seem bent on stirring up trouble, Stranger.”
“You know very well what boy,” retorted Mr. Gordon evenly. “You’ll stir up something more than mere trouble if he isn’t brought here within a few minutes, or information given where we may find him. Where is Bob Henderson?”
“Here, sir!” a blithe voice announced, and the door leading into a communicating room was jerked open.
Bob, his clothing a bit the worse for wear, but apparently sound and whole, stood there, brandishing a stout club.
“Oh, Bob!” Betty’s cry quite drowned the exclamation of the aunts, but Bob had no eye for any one but Blosser and Fluss, who were making a wild attempt to get past Mr. Gordon.
“Have they bought the farm?” demanded the boy excitedly. “Did they get my aunts to sign anything for them?”
“I’m your new landlord, Bob,” announced Mr. Gordon, patting himself on the chest. “Don’t think you can put me off when the rent comes due.”
“So that’s all right,” said Bob, with manifest relief. “As for those two scamps, who nearly choked me, well, let me get at them once.”
Whirling his club he charged upon the pair who squealed in terror and tore past Mr. Gordon, down the hall and out into the yard, Bob in pursuit. Miss Hope and Miss Charity ran to the windows, and Betty and her uncle watched from the porch (Betty was going to follow Bob as a matter of course, but Mr. Gordon held her back) as the boy continued the chase. Fluss and Blosser presented a ludicrous sight as they ran heavily, their coats flapping in the wind and their hats jammed low over their eyes. Bob did not try to catch up with them, but contented himself with shouting loudly and swishing his heavy club through the air, while he kept just close enough to their heels to warn them that it was not safe to slacken speed. In a few minutes the watchers saw him coming back, walking, a broad grin on his face.
“Good little Marathon, wasn’t it?” he called from the road. “Did you hear me yelling like an Indian? I chased them as far as the boundary line, and when I saw them they were still running. Gee, Mr. Gordon, I mean Uncle Dick, you got back from the oil fields just in time.”
He came up on the steps and shook hands with Mr. Gordon, and submitted to a hug from each aunt.
“Have you really bought the farm?” he asked curiously. “Or was that just a blind?”
Miss Hope and Miss Charity looked anxiously at Mr. Gordon. They had planned exactly what to do with that twenty thousand dollars.
“We haven’t signed an agreement,” admitted the successful bidder, “but the farm is sold, all right. I’ll give this check to Miss Hope now—” he hastily filled out a blank slip from his book—“as an evidence of good faith. Then I want to hear Bob’s tale, and then I must do a bit of telephoning. And to-morrow morning, good people, I promise you the surprise of your lives.”
Miss Hope glanced at the check he gave her, gasped, and opened her mouth to speak.
“Sh!” warned Mr. Gordon. “Dear lady, I’ve set my heart on staging a little climax; don’t spoil it. To-morrow morning at eleven o’clock we’ll have all the explanations. Now, Bob, what happened to you? I hear you nearly frightened your aunts into hysterics, to say nothing of Betty, whom I found tearing around Flame City hunting for a telephone.”
Bob was in a fever of curiosity to know about the farm, whether Mr. Gordon thought there was a good prospect of oil or not, but Uncle Dick was not the kind of man to have his decisions debated. Bob wisely concluded to wait with what patience he could until the proper time. He turned to Betty.
“You know when we separated to hunt for Daisy?” he said. “Well, I went through the first field all right, but when I was passing those two old apple trees that have grown together, Fluss and Blosser jumped out and one of ’em threw a coat over my head so I couldn’t shout. They downed me, and then Fluss stuffed his handkerchief in my mouth while Blosser tied my hands and feet. Daisy was behind the tree. I figured out they had come and got her, and I was mighty glad we had agreed to separate. I don’t doubt they would have bound and gagged you, too, Betty, if you had been with me. They wouldn’t stop at anything.
“They carried me to the barn loft—” Betty jumped a little. “Yes, I was up there when you were milking. Awfully hot up there in the hay it was, too. They were hiding near us when we planned to drop the bar as a signal, and I heard them laughing over that trick half the night. They slept up there with me—I was nearly dead for a drink of water—and once during the night Fluss did go down to the pump and bring me a drink, standing over me with that big club in case I should cry out when they took out the gag.
“This morning they watched and saw you ride off on Clover. They were in a panic for fear you would come back with some one before they could persuade the aunts to sell. I wish you could have seen them brushing each other off and shining their shoes on a horse blanket. They wanted to look stylish and as though they had just come from town instead of sleeping in a hayloft all night.”
“They said they had stayed in Flame City over night,” said Miss Hope indignantly. “The idea!”
“They had several,” grinned Bob. “I certainly put in an anxious hour up there after they had gone down the ladder. You see, I didn’t know Betty was going for Uncle Dick, and I didn’t know that any one else would say there was oil on the place. Fluss had a roll of bills as big as your arm, and I pictured him flashing that and Aunt Hope so anxious to send me to school that she wouldn’t leave a margin for herself and Aunt Charity to live on. If I had known that Uncle Dick was coming, I’d have saved myself a heap of worry.”
“If I had had to telephone to him, it would have been too late,” said Betty. “I just happened to find him in the post-office; didn’t I, Uncle Dick?”
“I’d just got back from the fields and was after mail,” Mr. Gordon explained. “I meant to stop and get directions from the Watterbys how to find the Saunders farm. Well, as it happened, everything was planned for the best.”
“How did you get down from the loft, Bob?” Betty asked curiously.
“Cut the string that tied my wrists on a rusty scythe I found as I was crawling over the floor,” said Bob. “Then, of course, I could pull out that nasty gag and untie my feet. I was a bit stiff at first, and I guess I fell down the hayloft ladder, but I was in such a hurry I’m not sure. The sharpers had left their club, and I brought tha
t along for good luck. And, Aunt Hope, I’m starving to death!”
“Bless your heart, of course you are!” And Miss Hope hurried out to the kitchen, tucking Mr. Gordon’s check into her apron pocket as she went. “I’ll stir up some waffles, I think,” she murmured, reaching for the egg bowl.
Mr. Gordon would not stay for dinner, for he was anxious, he said, to get to a telephone. He would spend the night with the Watterbys and be back the next morning with “an important some one.”
“I’m so excited I can’t walk straight,” declared Betty, skipping between table and stove in an effort to help Aunt Hope with the dinner. “Goodness, it seems forever till to-morrow morning!”
Miss Hope and Miss Charity went about the rest of the day in a daze, and Bob and Betty, who could not settle down to any task, went out to the barn and enacted the scene of Bob’s imprisonment all over again.
They were up at daybreak the next morning, and Miss Hope insisted on dusting and sweeping the whole house, though, as Bob said, it was hardly likely that their visitors would insist on seeing the attic.
“It isn’t the house Mr. Gordon is interested in,” the boy maintained sagaciously. “There’s oil here, Aunt Hope,” and this time Miss Hope did not contradict him.
At ten minutes to eleven Mr. Gordon drove up with a small, sandy-haired man who wore large horn-rimmed spectacles. He was introduced to Miss Hope and her sister as Mr. Lindley Vernet, and then the four went into the parlor and closed the door.
“Children not wanted,” said Mr. Gordon, grinning over his shoulder at Bob and Betty, left sitting on the porch.
“Children!” snorted Betty, shaking an indignant fist in pretended anger. “If it hadn’t been for us, or rather for you, Bob, this farm would have been sold for next to nothing.”
“If it hadn’t been for you, you mean,” retorted Bob. “Who was it went and brought back Uncle Dick? I might have shouted myself hoarse, but those rascals would have beaten me somehow. Do you suppose this Mr. Vernet is going to buy the place?”
“I think he is the head of Uncle Dick’s firm,” said Betty cautiously. “At least I’ve heard him speak of a Lindley Vernet. But I thought Uncle Dick offered a lot of money, didn’t you, Bob? How many acres are there?”
“Ninety,” announced Bob briefly. “What’s that? The door opened, so they must be through. No, it’s only Aunt Charity.”
But such a transformed Miss Charity! Her gentle dark eyes were shining, her cheeks were faintly pink, and she smiled at Betty and Bob as though something wonderful had happened.
“I came out to tell you,” she said mysteriously, sitting down on the top step between them and putting an arm around each. “The farm is sold, my darlings. Can you guess for how much?”
“More than twenty thousand?” asked Betty. “Oh—twenty-five?”
“Thirty?” hazarded Bob, seeing that Betty had not guessed it.
Miss Charity laughed excitedly and hugged them with all her frail strength.
“Mr. Vernet is going to pay us ninety thousand dollars!”
CHAPTER XXV
HAPPY DAYS
“Ninety thousand dollars!” repeated Bob incredulously. “Why, that is a thousand dollars an acre!”
“He is sure they will drill many paying wells,” said Miss Charity. “To think that this fortune should come in our old age! You can go to school and college, Bob, and Sister and I will never be a burden on you. Isn’t it just wonderful!”
She went off into a happy little day-dream, and presently the conference broke up, and Miss Hope and the two men came out on the porch. Mr. Vernet proved to be a jolly kind of person, intensely interested in oil and oil prospects, and evidently completely satisfied with his purchase.
“Here’s the young man I have to thank,” he commented, shaking hands with Bob. “If those sharpers had got hold of the place, they would have forced me to buy at more than a fair risk, or else sold the land in small holdings and we should have had that abomination, close drilling. I’m grateful to you, my lad, for outwitting those slick schemers.”
Miss Hope persuaded the two men to stay to dinner, and she and Miss Charity fairly outdid themselves in their cooking. Afterward Mr. Gordon took Mr. Vernet back to the oil fields, depositing in the Flame City bank for Miss Hope the check for twenty-five thousand dollars he had given her the day before, and the larger check she had received that morning.
“We’re rich, Sister, rich!” said Miss Charity, drying the dinner dishes and so overcome that she dropped a china cup which crashed into tiny pieces on the floor.
“Well, don’t break all the dishes,” advised Miss Hope, with dry practicality. “You can’t buy a pretty cup in Flame City if you are a millionaire.”
Bob’s head was full of plans for his education, and in the days that followed he often spoke of his future. Mr. Gordon listened and advised him frequently, and Bob grew fonder of him all the time.
Clover was brought back from the Flame City stable where Betty had left her, and they resumed their riding, Mr. Gordon hiring a horse and often accompanying them.
“You know, the aunts have never seen the oil fields,” said Betty one day, as they were slowly riding home from the fields where they had seen the largest new well in operation for the first time. “Don’t you think they would be interested, especially as their own farm will be an oil field next year?”
“We’ll take them on a sightseeing trip,” promised Mr. Gordon instantly. “If I can get a comfortable car, I’ll come for you all to-morrow morning. They’ll enjoy having dinner at the bunk house, and we’ll show them the workings of the whole place. Imagine a person who has lived in this oil country and hasn’t seen a well!”
The program was carried out, and the Misses Saunders thoroughly enjoyed the long day spent among the wells. They thought the machinery wonderful, as indeed it was, and marveled at the miles of pipe line.
Grandma Watterby, as might be expected, was delighted with the turn of events, and Betty and Bob spent a day with her, telling her all that had happened.
“It’s better than a book,” she sighed contentedly. “If Emma would only go around more, I’m sure she could find interesting things to tell me. ’Fore I was crippled with rheumatism, I used to know all that was goin’ on.”
The Watterbys had bought a car, and Bob was eager for his aunts to have one. They preferred to wait until it was decided where they were to spend the winter, and in this Mr. Gordon concurred. He had been made, at the request of the two old ladies and backed by the old country lawyer who had known their father, the guardian of Bob, who would not inherit his share of the ninety thousand dollars, of course, until he was twenty-one. Bob himself was very much pleased to be a ward of Betty’s uncle, feeling that now he “really belonged,” as he happily said.
“Who do you suppose this is from?” asked Betty, waving a letter at Bob one morning not long after their visit to the oil fields with the aunts. “You’ll never guess!”
Bob looked up from his book. He was luxuriously stretched under a tree, reading.
“From Bobby Littell?” he ventured.
“Bob Henderson, can you read the postmark from where you are?” Betty looked disappointed for a moment. “Oh, well, I might have known you would have guessed it. It is from Bobby. Want to hear a little bit?”
“I don’t mind,” conceded Bob graciously, keeping a finger in his book.
“She says they’ve been to Atlantic City for a month,” explained Betty. “That is, Bobby, Esther, Louise and Mrs. Littell. Mr. Littell could spend only a week with them. And now the girls are going to boarding school. Listen.
“‘Louise and I are going away to school this fall, and though Esther is crazy to go, too, Dad says he must have one of us at home, so I think she will have to wait a year or two. Louise and I have been to Miss Graham’s for three years, and I don’t see why it isn’t good enough for Esther till she is as old as we are. But you know she always wants to do everything we do. Oh, Betty, wouldn’t it be too lovely for
words if you should come to boarding school with us? Please ask your uncle, do. You can’t spend the winter in Oklahoma, can you? And if you are going to school I know you would like the one we’re going to. It is so highly recommended, and Mother personally knows the principal. I tell you—I’ll see that a catalogue is sent to you, and you show it to your uncle. Libbie thinks maybe she will go.’
“And she winds up by saying that her father and mother send their love, and they all want to know how you are and if you found your aunts,” concluded Betty, folding the letter. “I must write to Bobby and tell her your good luck.”
“Do you want to go to boarding school?” asked Bob. “Where is this place she’s so crazy about—in Washington?”
“I don’t know just where, but I don’t think it is very near Washington,” answered Betty carelessly. “Of course I’d love to go to boarding school. Do you suppose Uncle Dick would be willing?”
Mr. Gordon, when consulted, promised to “think it over,” and as Betty knew that none of his plans for the next few weeks were definitely settled and that the Littell girls would not go off to school before the middle of October, she was content to wait.
“Your education and Bob’s are matters for serious thought,” he told them more than once. “In some ways I think you are further advanced than most girls and boys of your age, but in other branches you will have to work hard to make up, Bob especially, for rather desultory training. I’ll have a long talk with you both just as soon as I get some business matters straightened out.”
So Bob and Betty put the school question aside for serious discussion, and proceeded to enjoy the days that followed. If any one is interested to know whether Betty did go to boarding school with the Littell girls and how Bob went about getting the education so long unfairly denied him, the answer may be found in the next volume of this series.
Mr. Gordon was still obliged to be away for several days at a time, and Betty and Bob continued to stay with Bob’s aunts. They made very little change in their mode of living, Miss Hope remarking that she “never was one to spend money; she liked to know it was in the bank, in case of need, but the older I get, the less I want.” As for help, there was none to be had for any amount of money, so Bob took care of the live stock till it should be sold. The oil company was to take over the farm the first of October.
The Second Girl Detective Megapack: 23 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls Page 224