The Wizard's Daughter, and Other Stories. Graham Margaret Collier

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СКАЧАТЬ reservoir will entail some expense," the professor rambled on; "but the money will come. 'To him that hath shall be given.'"

      Palmerston's face completed the quotation, but the speaker went on without opening his eyes: "When the water is once flowing out of the tunnel, capital will flow into it."

      "A good deal of capital will flow into the tunnel before any water flows out of it," growled Palmerston, taking advantage of his companion's physical defect to relieve his mind.

      Later in the evening Dysart drew the young man into the family conference, relying upon the sympathy of sex in the effort to allay his wife's misgivings.

      "The tunnel won't cost over two dollars a foot, with what I can do myself," maintained the little man, "and the professor says we'll strike water that'll drown us out before we've gone a hundred feet. Emeline here she's afraid of it because it sounds like a meracle, but I tell her it's pure science. It isn't any more wonderful than a needle traveling toward a magnet: the machine tells where the water is, and how far off it is, something like a compass – I don't understand it, but I can see that it ain't any more meraculous than a telegraph. It's science."

      "Oh, yes, I know," mourned Mrs. Dysart, who overflowed a small rocking-chair on the piazza; "there's folks that think the creation of the world in six days is nothin' but science, but they're not people for Christians to be goin' pardners with. If Gawd has put a hundred feet of dirt on top of that water, I tell Jawn he had his reasons, and I can't think it's right for anybody whose treasure ought to be laid up in heaven to go pryin' into the bowels of the earth huntin' for things that our heavenly Fawther's hid."

      "But there's gold, Emeline."

      "Oh, yes; I know there's gold, and I know 'the love of money is the root of all evil.' I don't say that the Lord don't reign over the inside of the earth, but I do say that people that get their minds fixed on things that's underground are liable to forget the things that are above."

      "Well, now, I'm sure they hadn't ought," protested Dysart. "I'm sure 'the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof,' Emeline."

      Mrs. Dysart sank slowly back in her chair at this unexpected thrust from her own weapon, and then rallied with a long, corpulent sigh.

      "Well, I don't know. You recollect that old man was up here last winter, hammerin' around among the rocks as if the earth was a big nut that he was tryin' to crack? I talked with him long enough to find out what he was; he was an atheist."

      Mrs. Dysart leaned forward and whispered the last word in an awe-struck tone, with her fat eyes fixed reproachfully upon her husband.

      "Oh, I guess not, Emeline," pleaded John.

      Mrs. Dysart shut her lips and her eyes very tight, and nodded slowly and affirmatively. "Yes, he was. He set right in that identical spot where Mr. Palmerston is a-settin', and talked about the seven theological periods of creation, and the fables of Jonah and the whale and Noah's ark, till I was all of a tremble. Mebbe that's science, Jawn, but I call it blasphemin'."

      Dysart rested his elbows on his knees and looked over the edge of the porch as if he were gazing into the bottomless pit.

      "Oh, come, now, Mrs. Dysart," Palmerston broke in cheerfully; "I'm not at all afraid of Mr. Dysart losing his faith, but I'm very much afraid of his losing his money. I wish he had as good a grip on his purse as he has on his religion."

      Mrs. Dysart glanced at the young man with a look of relief to find him agreeing with her in spite of his irreverent commingling of the temporal and the spiritual.

      "Well, I'm sure we've lost enough already, when it comes to that," she continued, folding her hands resignedly in her convex lap. "There was that artesian well down at San Pasqual" —

      "Well, now, Emeline," her husband broke in eagerly, "that well would have been all right if the tools hadn't stuck. I think yet we'd have got water if we'd gone on."

      "We'd 'a' got water if it had 'a' been our heavenly Fawther's will," announced Mrs. Dysart, with solemnity, rising slowly from her chair, which gave a little squeak of relief. "I've got to set the sponge," she went on in the same tone, as if it were some sacred religious rite. "I wish you'd talk it over with Mr. Palmerston, Jawn, and tell him the offer you've had from this perfessor – I'm sure I don't know what he's perfessor of. He ain't a perfessor of religion – I know that."

      She sent her last arrow over her wide shoulder as she passed the two men and creaked into the house. Her husband looked after her gravely.

      "Now that's the way with Emeline," he said; "she's all faith, and then, again, she has no faith. Now, I'm just the other way." He rubbed his bald head in a vain attempt to formulate the obverse of his wife's character. "Well, anyway," he resumed, accepting his failure cheerfully, "the professor he wants to find a claim, as I was telling you, but he wants one that's handy to the place he's selected for the tunnel. Of course he won't say just where that is till we get the papers made out, but he gave me a kind of a general idea of it, and the land around there's all mine. He'd have to go 'way over east to find a government section that hasn't been filed on, and of course there'd be a big expense for pipe; so he offers to locate the tunnel for half the water if we get ten inches or over, and I'm to make the tunnel, and deed him twenty acres of land."

      "Suppose you get less than ten inches – what then?"

      "Then it's all to be mine; but I'm to deed him the land all the same."

      "How many inches of water have you from your spring now?"

      "About ten, as near as I can guess."

      "Well, suppose he locates the tunnel so it will drain your spring; are you to have the expense of the work and the privilege of giving him half the water and twenty acres of land – is that it?"

      John rubbed the back of his neck and reflected.

      "The professor laughs at the idea of ten inches of water. He says we'll get at least a hundred, maybe more. You see, if we were to get that much, I'd have a lot of water to sell to the settlers below. It 'u'd be a big thing."

      "So it would; but there's a big 'if' in there, Dysart. Do you know anything about this man's record?"

      "I asked about him down in Los Angeles. Some folks believe in him, and some don't. They say he struck a big stream for them over at San Luis. I don't go much on what people say, anyway; I size a man up, and depend on that. I like the way the professor talks. I don't understand all of it, but he seems to have things pretty pat. Don't you think he has?"

      "Yes; he has things pat enough. Most swindlers have. It's their business. Not that I think him a deliberate swindler, Dysart. Possibly he believes in himself. But I hope you'll be cautious."

      "Oh, I'm cautious," asserted John. "I'd be a good deal richer man to-day if I hadn't been so cautious. I've spent a lot of time and money looking into things. I'll get there, if caution'll do it. Now, Emeline she's impulsive; she has to be held back; she never examines into anything: but I'm just the other way."

      In spite of Palmerston's warning and Mrs. Dysart's fears, temporal and spiritual, negotiations between Dysart and Brownell made rapid progress. The newcomer's tent was pitched upon the twenty acres selected, and gleamed white against the mountain-side, suggesting to Palmerston's idle vision a sail becalmed upon a sage-green sea. "Dysart's ship, which will probably never come in," he said to himself, looking at it with visible indignation, one morning, as he sat at his tent door in that state of fuming indolence which the male American calls taking a rest.

      "Practically СКАЧАТЬ