"Humph! I suppose that means you fought like hell. 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 associations 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 association 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 God!" 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.