“I am sure enough to want to send to Louisville immediately for a drill
to test it. I have had a lot of experience with oil in various places
and I am a regular oil wizard. You have heard of a water witch? My
friends say that my nose has never played me false, and I can smell out
oil lands that they would buy on the say-so of my scent as quickly as
with the proof of a drill and pump. My, I’m glad for this good luck to
come to these people who have been so good to my little girl.”
The two men were very much excited as they made their way back to the
house.
“It is funny the way oil crops up in unexpected places,” said Mr. Kean.
“There is very little of it in this belt, and for that reason Mrs. Brown
should get a very good price for her land. I think it best for her to
sell to the Trust as soon as possible. There is no use in fighting them.
They are obliged to win out. They will be pretty square with her if she
does not try to fight them. What a fine young fellow that Kent is! And
as for Miss Molly, she is a corker! She has got my poor little wild
Indian of a Judy out of dozens of scrapes at college. Judy always ends
by telling us all about the terrible things that almost happened to her.
She seems to me to be a little tamer, but maybe it is a strangeness from
not seeing us for so long.”
Edwin Green had his own opinion about the reason for that seeming
tameness, but he held his peace. He could not help seeing Kent’s
partiality for Miss Julia Kean, and had no reason to believe otherwise
than that the young lady reciprocated. Love, or the possibility of
loving, might be a great tamer for Judy. He was really not far from the
mark. Judy was interested in Kent, very much so, but it was ambition
that was steadying her and a determination to do something with the
artistic talent that she was almost sure she possessed. Paris was her
Mecca, and she was preparing herself to talk it out with her parents.
They, poor grown-up children that they were, had no plans for their
daughter’s future. College had solved the problem for four years, but,
now that that was over, what to do with her next? They loved to have her
with them and had looked forward eagerly to the time when she could be
with them, but after all was a railway camp the best place for a girl of
Judy’s stamp?
“Mrs. Brown, what will you take for that barren strip of land over
there?” said Mr. Kean, sinking into a chair on the porch where the
ladies were still having their quiet talk.
“Well, Mr. Kean, since it is not worth anything, and I have to pay taxes
on it, I think I would give it away to any one who would promise to keep
up the fences.”
“Can you get right-of-way through the adjoining place to the road behind
you, where I see that a narrow-gauge railroad runs?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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