The Lookout Man by B. M. Bower (electronic reader txt) 📕

his business; so the idea is to have just Fred and the professor—and you, if you'll go—and me to go and attend to the assessments. All the other names will be dummy names—well, silent partners is a better word—and we can control a tremendously valuable tract that way. How about a henna rinse, Marion? Would it be worth while?"

"Why, a henna rinse would brighten your hair, Kate—and lots of nice women have them. But you'll have to have a shampoo, you know. The henna rinse is used with a shampoo. I believe I'd have one if I were you, Kate. You never could tell it in the world. And it's good for the hair, too. It—"

"Fred is so disagreeable about such things. But if it couldn't be told—" Kate began to doubt again. "Does it cost extra?"

"Fifty cents—but it does brighten the hair. It brings out the natural color—there is an auburn tint—"

"But I really meant to have a manicure today. And we can't talk in the manicure parlor—those tables are crowded together so! I've a tremendous lot to tell you, too. Which would you have, Marion?"

Miss Rose dutifully considered the matter while she continued the scalp massage. Before they had decided definitely upon the extravagance of a henna rinse, which was only a timid sort of experiment and at best a mere compromise art and nature, Marion had applied the tonic. It seemed a shame to waste that now with a shampoo, and she did not dare to go for another dish of the tonic; so Kate sighed and consoled herself with a dollar saved, and went without the manicure also.

Rather incoherently she returned to her subject, but she did not succeed in giving Miss Rose anything more than a confused idea of a trip somewhere that would really be an outing, and a tremendous opportunity to make thousands of dollars with very little effort. This sounded alluring. Marion mentally cancelled a date with a party going to Venice that evening, and agreed to meet Kate at six o'clock, and hear more about it.

In the candy shop where they ate, her mind was even more receptive to tremendous opportunities for acquiring comparative wealth with practically no initial expense and no effort whatever. Not being subjected to the distraction of a beauty parlor, Kate forgot to use her carefully modulated, elocutionary voice, and buzzed with details.

"It's away up in the northern part of the State somewhere, in the mountains. You know timber land is going to be tremendously valuable—it is now, in fact. And this tract of beautiful big trees can be gotten and flumed—or something—down to a railroad that taps the country. It's in Forest Reserve, you see, and can't be bought by the lumber companies. I had the professor explain it all to me again, after I left the Martha, so I could tell you.

"A few of us can club together and take mining claims on the land—twenty acres apiece. All we have to do is a hundred dollars' worth of work—just digging holes around on it, or something—every year till five hundred dollars' worth is done. Then we can get our deed—or whatever it is—and sell the timber."

"Well, what do you know about that!" Marion exclaimed ecstatically, leaning forward across the little table with her hands clasped. Nature had given her a much nicer voice than Kate's, and the trite phrase acquired a pretty distinctiveness just from the way she said it. "But—would you have to stay five years, Kate?" she added dubiously.

"No, that's the beauty of it, you can do all the five hundred dollars' worth in one year, Marion."

"Five hundred dollars' worth of digging holes in the ground!" Marion gasped, giggling a little. "Good night!"

"Now please wait until you hear the rest of it!" Kate's tone sharpened a little with impatience. She moved a petulant elbow while a tired waitress placed two glasses of water and a tiny plate of white and brown bread upon the table. The minute the girl's back was turned upon them she cast a cautious eye around the clattering throng and leaned forward.

"Four men—men with a little capital—are going into it, and pay Fred and the professor for doing their assessment work. Four five-hundreds will make two thousand dollars that we'll get out of them, just for looking after their interests. And we'll have our twenty acres apiece of timber—and you've no idea what a tremendous lot of money that will bring, considering the investment. Fred's worked so hard lately that he's all run down and looks miserable. The doctor told him the mountains would do him a world of good. And the professor wants to do something definite and practical—they are filling up the college with student-teachers, willing to teach some certain subject for the instruction they'll get in some other—and they're talking about cutting the professor's salary. He says he will not endure another cut—he simply cannot, and—"

"And support an elocutionist?"

"Now, hush! It isn't—"

"Do I draw any salary as chaperone, Kate?"

"Now, if you don't stop, I'll not tell you another thing!" Kate took a sip of water to help hide a little confusion, clutching mentally at the practical details of the scheme. "Where was I?"

"Cutting Doug's salary. Is it up on a mountain, or up in the State, that you said the place was? I'd like being on a mountain, I believe—did you ever see such hot nights as we're having?"

"It's up both," Kate stated briefly. "You'd love it, Marion. There's a log house, and right beside it is a trout stream. And it's only six miles from the railroad, and good road up past the place. A man who has been up there told Doug—the professor. Tourists just flock in there. And right up on top of the mountain, within walking distance of our claims, is a lake, Marion! And great trout in it, that long!—you can see them swimming all around in schools, the water is so clear. And there is no inlet or outlet, and no bottom. The water is just as clear and as blue as the sky, the man told the professor. It's so clear that they actually call it Crystal Lake!"

"Well, what do you know about that!" breathlessly murmured Marion in her crooning voice. "A lake like that on top of a mountain—in weather like this, doesn't it sound like heaven?" She began to pick the pineapple out of her fruit salad, dabbing each morsel in the tiny mound of whipped cream.

"We'd need some outing clothes, of course. I've been thinking that a couple of plain khaki suits—you know—and these leggings that lace down the side, would be all we'd really need. I wish you'd go out home with me instead of going to a show. Fred will be home, and he can explain the details of this thing better than I can. If it were a difficult stanza of Browning, now—but I haven't much talent for business. And seriously, Marion, you must know all about this before you really say yes or no. And it's time you had some real object in life—time you settled down to regard your life seriously. I love you just the