Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil: or, The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune. Emerson Alice B.

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СКАЧАТЬ bully and persuade some timid old woman into selling her farm to them for a fraction of its worth.”

      “Can’t you expose ’em?” said Betty vigorously. “Tell the oil men about them! I guess there must be people who would know how to keep such men from doing business. What are you going to do about it, Bob?”

      The boy looked at her in admiration.

      “You believe in action, don’t you?” he returned. “You see, we can’t really do anything yet, because, so far as we know, the men have merely talked their scheme over. If people were arrested for merely plotting, the world might be saved a lot of trouble, but free speech would be a thing of the past. As long as they only talk, Betty, we can’t do a thing.”

      “Here those men come now, down the aisle,” whispered Betty excitedly. “Don’t look up – pretend to be fixing the camera.”

      Bob obediently fumbled with the box, while Betty gazed detachedly across the aisle. The two men glanced casually at them as they passed, opened the door of the car, and went on into the next coach.

      “They’re going to the smoker,” guessed Bob, correctly as it proved. “I’m going to follow them, Betty, and see if I can hear any more. Perhaps there will be something definite to report to the proper authorities. From what Mr. Littell told us, the oil field promoters would like all the crooks rounded up. They’re the ones that hurt the name of reputable oil stocks. You don’t care if I go, do you?”

      “I did want you to help me scatter seeds,” confessed Betty candidly. “However, go ahead, and I’ll do it myself. Lend me the camera, and I’ll take my sweater and stay out a while. If I’m not here when you come back, look for me out on the observation platform.”

      Bob hurried after the two possible sharpers, and Betty went through the train till she came to the last platform, railed in and offering the comforts of a porch to those passengers who did not mind the breeze. This morning it was deserted, and Betty was glad, for she wanted a little time to herself.

      CHAPTER II

      THINKING BACKWARD

      Betty leaned over the rail, flinging the contents of the seed packets into the air and breathing a little prayer that the wind might carry them far and that none might “fall on stony ground.”

      “If I never see the flowers, some one else may,” she thought. “I remember that old lady who lived in Pineville, poor blind Mrs. Tompkins. She was always telling about the pear orchard she and her husband planted the first year of their married life out in Ohio. Then they moved East, and she never saw the trees. ‘But somebody has been eating the pears these twenty years,’ she used to say. I hope my flowers grow for some one to see.”

      When she had tossed all the seeds away, Betty snuggled into one of the comfortable reed chairs and gave herself up to her own thoughts. Since leaving Washington, the novelty and excitement of the trip had thoroughly occupied her mind, and there had been little time for retrospection.

      This bright morning, as the prairie land slipped past the train, Betty Gordon’s mind swiftly reviewed the incidents of the last few months and marveled at the changes brought about in a comparatively short time. She was an orphan, this dark-eyed girl of thirteen, and, having lost her mother two years after her father’s death, had turned to her only remaining relative, an uncle, Richard Gordon. How he came to her in the little town of Pineville, her mother’s girlhood home, and arranged to send her to spend the summer on a farm with an old school friend of his has been told in the first volume of this series, entitled “Betty Gordon at Bramble Farm; or, The Mystery of a Nobody.” At Bramble Farm Betty had met Bob Henderson, a lad a year or so older than herself and a ward from the county poorhouse. The girl and boy had become fast friends, and when Bob learned enough of his mother’s family to make him want to know all and in pursuit of that knowledge had fled to Washington, it seemed providential that Betty’s uncle should also be in the capital so that she, too, might journey there.

      That had been her first “real traveling,” mused Betty, recalling her eagerness to discover new worlds. Bob had been the first to leave the farm, and Betty had made the trip to Washington alone. This morning she vividly remembered every detail of the day-long journey and especially of the warm reception that awaited her at the Union Station. This has been described in the second book of this series, entitled If Betty should live to be an old lady she would probably never cease to recall the peculiar circumstances under which she made friends with the three Littell girls and their cousin from Vermont and came to spend several delightful weeks at the hospitable mansion of Fairfields. The Littell family had grown to be very fond of Betty and of Bob, whose fortunes seemed to be inextricably mixed up with hers, and when the time came for them to leave for Oklahoma, fairly showered them with gifts.

      No sooner did word reach Betty that her uncle awaited her in the oil regions than Bob announced that he was going West, too. He had succeeded in getting trace of two sisters of his mother, and presumably they lived somewhere in the section where Betty’s uncle was stationed.

      “I’ll never forget how lovely the Littells were to us,” thought Betty, a mist in her eyes blurring the sage brush. “Wasn’t Bob surprised when Mr. Littell gave him that camera? And Mrs. Littell must have known he didn’t have a nice bag, because she gave him that beauty all fitted with ebony toilet articles. And the girls clubbed together and gave each of us a signet ring – that was dear of them. I thought they had done everything for me friends could, keeping me there so long and entertaining me as though they had invited me as a special guest; so when Mr. and Mrs. Littell gave me that string of gold beads I was just about speechless. There never were such people! Heigho! Four months ago I was living in a little village, discontented because Uncle Dick wouldn’t take me with him. And now I’ve made lots of new friends, seen Washington, and am speeding toward the wild and woolly West. I guess it never pays to complain.”

      With this philosophical conclusion, Betty pulled a letter from her pocket and fell to reading it. Bobby Littell had written a letter for each day of the journey and Betty had derived genuine pleasure from these gay notes so like the cheerful, sunny Roberta herself. This morning’s letter was taken up with school plans for the fall, and the writer expressed a wish that Betty might go with them to boarding school.

      “Libbie thinks perhaps her mother will send her, and just think what fun we could have,” wrote Bobby, referring to the Vermont cousin.

      Betty dismissed the school question lightly from her mind. She would certainly enjoy going to school with the Littell girls, and boarding school was one of her day-dreams, as it is of most girls her age. After she had seen her uncle and spent some time with him – he was very dear to her, was this Uncle Dick – she thought she might be ready to go back East and take up unceremoniously. But there was the subject of the probable cost – something that never bothered the Littell girls. Betty knew nothing of her uncle’s finances, beyond the fact that he had been very generous with her, sending her checks frequently and never stinting her by word or suggestion. Still, boarding school, especially a school selected by the Littells, would undoubtedly be expensive. Betty wisely decided to let the matter drop for the time being.

      Sage brush and prairie was now left behind, and the train was rattling through a heavy forest. Betty was glad that the rather nippy breeze had apparently kept every one else indoors, or else the monotony of a long train journey. The platform continued to be deserted, and, wondering what delayed Bob, she took up the camera to try again for a picture of the receding track. She and Bob had used up perhaps half a dozen films on this one subject, and the gleaming point where the rails came together in the distance had an inexhaustible fascination for the girl.

      “How it does blow!” she gasped. “I remember now when we stopped at that water-station Bob spoke of – I didn’t notice it at СКАЧАТЬ