Tom glanced doubtfully at Jackson and at his sister. Neither Hanna nor old Henry was present.
“I reckon you can tell Mr. Lockwood about it,” said Louise. “It’s all among friends.”
“Shorely. Well, then—did you ever hear of Pascagoula Oil?”
Lockwood shook his head, foolishly imagining some brand of motor lubricant.
“It’s an oil mine—an oil well—down on the coast, somewhere round Pascagoula way. They’re keepin’ it dark; only a few folks in it; but they’ll be pumpin’ millions of gallons of oil directly. They’re pumpin’ some now. Hanna knew all about it from the start, an’ he got us in on the ground floor.”
“I see,” said Lockwood, with heavy foreboding. Louise was watching his face anxiously.
“Do you know much about the well?”
“Shorely we do. We know all about it.” He went into the next room and brought back a bundle of papers. “Look yere. Photografts of it, from their first drillin’ up to now. Here’s the story of the whole thing, tellin’ how much oil there is, an’ everything. Take this stuff away with you an’ read it, if you wanter.”
Lockwood glanced over the badly printed prospectus, and the pictures, which might have been pictures of an oil derrick anywhere.
“So Mr. Hanna got you in on the ground floor, did he?” he said slowly. “Have you got much stock in it?”
“Well, that’s the worst of it. We couldn’t git enough. Only fifty shares, five thousand dollars. Hanna’s got a wad of it, near three thousand shares, I reckon. Oh, it’s all right—don’t have no suspicion about that, sir. Why, it’s payin’ dividends right now. Yes, sir! Five per cent every quarter—twenty per cent a year. We’ve got back already near a thousand of what we put in.
“And that ain’t all! We could git double for our shares what we paid for ’em. I know we could. I’ve had letters askin’ me to sell, offerin’ all sorts of prices. I sold once. Yes, sir, just to see that it was genuine I sold one of my hundred-dollar shares, an’ got two hundred dollars for it. What do you think about that? Some investment, eh?”
“Yes, it does sound good,” said Lockwood. “But, Tom, if I were you I’d go down there and see the oil wells myself, before I put any more money into the thing.”
“I did speak to Hanna about going down,” said Tom. “He didn’t seem to want to go much. Say,” he added, with an inspiration. “Supposin’ you an’ me go, eh? We’ll stop in Mobile, an’ have a hell of a time. It won’t cost you a cent. You know all about Mobile, I reckon?”
“I know it a little.”
“You know, I never was in Mobile but once, an’ then I was with Hanna, an’ we didn’t have no fun. I reckon you an’ me, we’d have a better time by ourselves.”
He poked Lockwood in the ribs. Lockwood glanced at Louise, who was smiling faintly.
“Sure we’ll go, Tom!” he said. “Just as soon as work slacks up a little at the camp. By the way, you’d better not say anything to Hanna about it.”
“You bet!” returned Tom, winking. “Likely I hadn’t oughter told you nothin’ about this yere oil mine. He said I wasn’t to let it out. But it’ll be all right. Most likely he’d have told you himself later.”
“Just between friends,” suggested Lockwood gravely, and Tom innocently assented.
Lockwood carried a memory of Louise’s anxious smile as he rode away. He thought that he had got at the heart of Hanna’s scheme at last. A fake oil well—the crudest of swindles, but good enough to impose upon these unsophisticated children of the big swamps. Easy also to expose!
The position looked plain; the only problem was as to how he should attack it. Hanna’s standing in that house was far more solid than his own; the boys liked him, but they would believe Hanna first. Louise indeed might trust him; passionately he wished it might be so. But he could not interfere in this game until he knew the cards in his own hands. He felt confident of the fraud that was being practiced, but he would have to have the proof. He would have to go to Pascagoula, either with Tom Power or alone.
Then would come the exposure, the explosion, possibly the killing. The Power boys themselves would be quick enough to resent being victimized, and from stories he had heard they had drawn pistols before. But the exposure would almost certainly involve his own exposure. Louise would learn that he had been in prison.
He shrank hotly from that revelation. He thought it over all the next day, while he sweated about the smoking still, and the day after while he rode the woods. He hung back from visiting the Powers; he hesitated to act.
He saw the house boat as usual that afternoon, still moored where he had first found it, where he had since seen it almost every day. To-day, he heard a sound of voices in strong altercation on the house boat, and guessed that the thieves had fallen out. He approached the bayou, his horse treading softly on the pine needles and mold, pulled up just beyond the line of willows, and listened.
Nobody was in sight ashore or aboard the boat, but a sound of quarreling came out violently through the open, glassless windows of the cabin. He could scarcely distinguish a word, but he almost immediately recognized one of the voices as that of Jackson Power.
He was startled and shocked. At least two other voices joined, but they were so intermingled that he could make out nothing. Then Jackson burst out clearly:
“I won’t do it. I ain’t had——”
“You cayn’t prove nothin’!” interrupted another.
“Then let him do it, ef he——”
The voices dropped again to confused wrangling. Once more they rose to angry exclamations and profanities. So fierce it grew that he expected to see a knot of fighting figures roll out of the cabin door, or to hear a crash of shooting. But again the altercation subsided, and comparative quiet ensued.
Still Lockwood sat his horse silently behind the willows, puzzled, but resolved to hear the last of it. But there was nothing more to hear. The rest of the conversation was inaudible; and in the course of fifteen minutes young Power came out of the cabin, jumped ashore, and made off up the bayou toward his home. He looked angry and greatly upset.
Lockwood was just about to ride away, when another man came out from behind a titi thicket near the mooring, where he might have been ambushed all the time, and quietly went aboard the boat. It was Hanna.
Again Lockwood listened. A mutter of low voices came from the house boat, but no words were distinguishable. Lockwood rode on after a few minutes of vain eavesdropping, but as he turned away he noted an object that gave him a sharper thrill than anything.
Whether it had merely escaped his notice before, he knew not; but hanging outside the stern wall of the cabin was a hunter’s horn of curved cow horn—the same sort of horn as Jackson had blown in reply on the night of the poker game. Lockwood began to see possible depths of intricacy in the situation which he had not suspected.
The sight of the horn on the house boat impressed Lockwood powerfully. It was not an extraordinary article to find there, indeed; but he remembered the blowing and response on the night of the card party. It seemed to him now remarkably as if these had been preconcerted signals. Young Jackson’s presence on the house boat, the quarrel that Lockwood had overheard, the boy’s evidently intimate relation with the river gang made the shadowy possibility seem almost probable.
The Power boys were no doubt old acquaintances of Blue Bob; they had even interfered when Charley Craig had wished to “run him off.” They had no social prejudices, and Jackson would probably not be above drinking shinney or gambling on board the house boat. Probably the quarrel had related to a hand of cards, and the horn-blowing might have been a summons or appointment for a rendezvous.
So Lockwood half reassured himself, and then he remembered that Hanna had been listening, too. Hanna had taken an interest in the altercation, and had afterwards gone aboard to talk with river pirates. It was the second time that Lockwood had caught him going to them, and what he could have to say to them was a mystery.
It was nearly a week before he again saw any members of the Power family. He rode over once just before dusk and found nobody at home. A few days later, finding some spare time on his hands early in the forenoon, he repeated his call. He found old Henry Power sitting in his customary attitude of relaxation on the front gallery. He had discarded shoes and socks in the heat, and his bare brown feet were cocked up on the railing. His cob pipe was in his mouth, and an empty tumbler stood on a stool beside him. No one else was in sight.
Lockwood’s hyper-sensitive nerves made him instantly sense a shade of difference in the old squatter’s greeting. He hesitated; then dismounted and tied his horse.
“Won’t you come up?” Henry drawled, without rising. “Right hot, ain’t it?”
The words were not quite inhospitable, but Henry’s face did not beam with its usual cordiality. Lockwood sat down on the top step of the gallery and fanned himself with his hat. It was hot, indeed.
“Won’t you have a shot o’ cawn licker?” Power suggested, with a rather forced manner.
“No, I can’t drink in hot weather,” Lockwood declined. “Are the boys at home?”
“Naw. They’ve done gone out in the cyar,” responded Henry, gazing straight out through the walnut avenue.
“They have a good time with that car,” said Lockwood, assured now of a chilliness in his reception.
“Seems like that thar gas buggy is all they ever think about,” replied the old man, unbending slightly. “Hawses is plenty good enough fer me. I wouldn’t trade a good hawse fer the best engine-wagon the Yankees ever made. No, suh! Louise feels that way, too. She’s gone out ridin’ now—gone to visit Em’ly Smith.”
Lockwood seized this information with avidity. He knew where the Smiths lived, a couple of miles beyond the Atha store. He might contrive to meet her on her way back.
He was afraid to ask when she would return, and he was afraid of seeming to hurry away. He rolled a cigarette, keeping an eye on the road, and talking of casual matters. One of the chippers had been found dead in the woods, and Craig had insisted that Blue Bob leave the bayou. He passed these items of gossip along, but Henry did not seem greatly interested. He wriggled his toes and smoked his pipe, saying little. He was plainly uncomfortable, under some compulsion that restrained his normal geniality. It was a much too serious matter for Lockwood to feel entertained. Something had cooled old Power; there was a hostile influence at work. Had the boys reported to Hanna his comments on Pascagoula Oil?
“Won’t you stay an’ eat dinner with us?” said Henry perfunctorily, when Lockwood presently got up.
“Afraid I can’t. I just dropped in a minute—on my way to the post office.”
Henry did not ask him to come again, but merely nodded a brief farewell as Lockwood saluted him from the saddle and rode off.