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OIL
65
a very busy man, moving about the neighborhood on mysterious errands of his own, settling old accounts and driving some bargains with characteristic shrewdness, but he was in a high state of glee when the time came to put the scene of his high financing behind him, and left the forlorn settlement without a shadow of regret on his smooth countenance.
Many long months elapsed before the Mortons were again seen in the neighborhood, and, meanwhile, the face of Nature was deeply pierced and scarred on the old thistle-patch. There were derricks, engine house, pumps and tanks on the ground itself, and the cross-roads had taken on a dusty, bustling activity that usually presages a boom. Trade in suspenders had become bullish in the general store, and many of the loungers now wore store clothes in forlorn imitation of the Easterners, when Morton, converted by the tailor's art, and his wife and daughter, radiant in becoming gowns like those in the fashion periodical illustrations, drove up to their old home, with a just-backfrom-the-continent air that was crushing to those still living in hopes of release from poverty's serfdom. But Morton's reception at the general store was not without marring incidents, in spite of a generous handout of five-cent cigars. There was an illsuppressed tendency to jeer at the former owner of the oiled land, and one hanger-on went so far as to seize an empty can and give an imitation of a man manufacturing surface indications.
The blushing '" fee-aunt-say, ' ' in company with her mother, visited the office of the new works, where John was installed in a managerial capacity, and brought him back to the old home to supper with mixed emotions.
The company had struck oil!
According to John, they were only waiting to* perfect certain arrangements that would raise the value of their property to a half million.
A half million of dollars !
They were approaching the old home, and Mrs. Morton's bosom was
MORT DESTROYS HIS NOW USELESS KEROSENE JUG
swelling to the bursting point with indignation.
Out near the woodpile was her husband with an ax. On a stump before him stood an inoffensive molasses jug. He swung the ax vengefully and smashed the jug to smithereens!
''Humph!" ejaculated Mrs. Morton as a preliminary toot before her train of thought started from the station.
"Pa will catch it!" Bertha prophetically confided to John.
Pa's limited irritability seemed, however, to have been entirely exhausted on the polished jug, for his face wTas as smooth as its one shining exterior when he greeted his prospective son-and-heir-at-law.
"I jist heered the good news," he observed, cheerfully.
"We have the oil," said John, with becoming modesty; "millions of gallons, but we are compelled to wait a few weeks for enlargement of territory and right of way until certain options expire that some one took on land all around us."
"Too bad!" Foxy Mort commiserated him with sympathy that trembled in his voice. "I wonder who dun it?"