“Sure I can figger! But then, if it don’t amount to nothin’, what you comin’ here bustin’ up our lease about it for?” “I can tell you this right now!” cried Mr. Hank. “You’ll never get me to sign no such agreement.” “Nor me,” said Miss Snypp, the trained nurse, a decided young lady with spectacles. “I think us little lots have put up with our share of imposition.” “What I say,” added Mr. Hank, “let’s go back to the original agreement, the only sensible one, share and share alike, all lots equal, same as we vote.” “Let me point out something, Mr. Hank,” said Mr. Dibble, with much dignity. “Am I correct in the impression that you own one of the little lots adjoining the alley?” “Yes, I do.” “Well, then, have you figured that the law entitles you to an extra fifteen feet all along that alley? That puts you somewhat ahead of the medium lots.” Mr. Hank’s lantern jaw dropped down. “Oh!” he said. And Mrs. Groarty burst into laughter. “Oh! Oh! That changes it, of course! It’s us medium lots that are the suckers now—us that make up half the lease!” “And us little lots that ain’t on the alley!” cried Mrs. Keith, the wife of a baseball player. “What about my husband and I?” “It looks to me we’re clean busted up,” said Mr. Sahm, the plasterer. “We don’t know who we belong with no more.” Like most of the men in the room, he had got out a pencil and paper, and was trying to figure this new arrangement; and the more he figured, the more complications he discovered. IV It had been the Walter Browns who had started the idea of a “community agreement” for this block. Two or three lots were enough for a well, but for such a lease you could only get some small concern, and like as not you would fall into the hands of a speculator, and be bartered about, perhaps exploited by a “syndicate” and sold in “units,” or tied up in a broken contract, and have to sit by and watch while other people drained the oil from under your land. No, the thing to do was to get a whole block together; then you had enough for half a dozen wells, and could deal with one of the big companies, and you would get quick drilling, and more important yet, you would be sure of your royalties when they were earned. So, after much labor, and pulling and hauling, and threatening and cajoling, and bargaining and intriguing, the owners of the twenty-four lots had met at the Groarty home, and had signed their names, both husbands and wives, to a “community agreement,” to the effect that none of them would lease apart from the others. This document had been duly recorded in the county archives; and now day by day they were realizing what they had done to themselves. They had agreed to agree; and from that time on, they had never been able to agree to anything!