“I have arranged with my bank to honor any checks either of you may draw. So if you have need of more money than you take with you, you’ll know how to get it. Any planter or merchant down the coast will cash your checks for you. Now I must say good-bye to all of you, as I have many things to do before leaving. I wish all of you a very jolly time.”
With that he quitted the room, but a few minutes later he opened the door to say:
“If you get that far down the coast, boys, I wish you would take a look over Quasi and see that there are no squatters there.”
When he had gone, Cal said:
“Wonder if father hopes to win yet in that Quasi matter, after all these years?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” answered Larry. “Anyhow, we’ll go that far down, if only to gratify his wish.”
“Is Quasi a town?” asked Dick, whose curiosity was awakened by the oddity of the name.
“No. It’s a plantation, and one with a story.”
Dick asked no more questions, but presently Cal said to his brother:
“Why don’t you go on, Larry, and tell him all about it? I have always been taught by my pastors and masters, and most other people I have ever known, that it is exceedingly bad manners to talk in enigmas before guests. Besides, there’s no secret about this. Everybody in South Carolina who ever heard the name Rutledge knows all about Quasi. Go on and tell the fellows, lest they think our family has a skeleton in some one or other of its closets, and is cherishing some dark, mysterious secret.”
“Why don’t you tell it yourself, Cal? You know the story as well as I do.”
“Because, oh my brother, it was your remark that aroused the curiosity which it is our hospitable duty to satisfy. I do not wish to trespass upon your privileges or take your obligations upon myself. Go on! There is harkening all about you. You have your audience and your theme. We hang upon your lips.”
“Oh, it isn’t much of a story, but I may as well tell it,” said Larry, smiling at his brother’s ponderous speech.
“Quasi is a very large plantation occupying the end of a peninsula. Except on the mainland side a dozen miles of salt water, mud banks and marsh islands, separate it from the nearest land. On the mainland side there is a marsh two or three miles wide and a thousand miles deep, I think. At any rate, it is utterly impassable – a mere mass of semi-liquid mud, though it looks solid enough with its growth of tall salt marsh grass covering its ugliness and hiding its treachery. The point might as well be an island, so far as possibilities of approach to it are concerned, and in effect it is an island, or quasi an island. I suppose some humorous old owner of it had that in mind when he named it Quasi.
“It is sea island cotton land of the very finest and richest kind, and when it was cultivated it was better worth working than a gold mine. There are large tracts of original timber on it, and as it has been abandoned and running wild for more than twenty years, even the young tree growths are large and fine now.
“That is where the story begins. Quasi belonged to our grandfather Rutledge. He didn’t live there, but he had the place under thorough cultivation. When the war broke out my grandfather was one of the few men in the South who doubted our side’s ability to win, and as no man could foresee what financial disturbances might occur, he decided to secure his two daughters – our father’s sisters, who were then young girls – against all possibility of poverty, by giving Quasi to them in their own right. ‘Then,’ he thought, ‘they will be comfortably well off, no matter what happens.’ So he deeded Quasi to them.
“When the Federals succeeded, early in the war, in seizing upon the sea island defences, establishing themselves at Beaufort, Hilton Head, and other places, it was necessary for my grandfather to remove all the negroes from Quasi, lest they be carried off by the enemy. The place was therefore abandoned, but my grandfather said that, at any rate, nobody could carry off the land, and that that would make my aunts easy in their finances, whenever peace should come again. As he was a hard-fighting officer, noted for his dare-devil recklessness of danger, he did not think it likely that he would live to see the end. But he believed he had made his daughters secure against poverty, and as for my father, he thought him man enough to take care of himself.”
“The which he abundantly proved himself to be when the time came,” interrupted Cal, with a note of pride in his tone.
“Oh, that was a matter of course,” answered Larry. “It’s a way the Rutledges have always had. But that is no part of the story I’m telling. During the last year of the war, when everything was going against the South, grandfather saw clearly what the result must be, and he understood the effect it would have upon his fortunes. He was a well-to-do man – I may even say a wealthy one – but he foresaw that with the negroes set free and the industries of the South paralyzed for the time, his estate would be hopelessly insolvent. But like the brave man that he was, he did not let these things trouble him. Believing that his daughters were amply provided for, and that my father – who at the age of twenty-five had fought his way from private to major – could look out for himself, the grim old warrior went on with his soldierly work and bothered not at all as to results.
“In the last months of the war, when the Southern armies were being broken to pieces, the clerk’s office, in which his deeds of Quasi to my aunts were recorded, was burned with all its contents. As evidence of the gift to his daughters nothing remained except his original deeds, and these might easily be destroyed in the clearly impending collapse of everything. To put those deeds in some place of safety was now his most earnest purpose. He took two or three days’ leave of absence, hurried to Charleston, secured the precious papers and put them in a place of safety – so safe a place, indeed, that to this day nobody has ever found them. That was not his fault. For the moment he returned to his post of command he sat down to write a letter to my aunts, telling them what he had done and how to find the documents. He had not written more than twenty lines when the enemy fell upon his command, and during the fight that ensued, he was shot through the head and instantly killed. His unfinished letter was sent to my aunts, but it threw no light upon the hiding place he had selected.
“When the war ended, a few weeks later, the estate was insolvent, as my grandfather had foreseen. In the eagerness to get hold of even a little money to live upon, which was general at that time, my grandfather’s creditors were ready to sell their claims upon the estate for any price they could get, and two of the carrion crows called money-lenders bought up all the outstanding obligations.
“When they brought suit for the possession of my grandfather’s property, they included Quasi in their claim. When my father protested that Quasi belonged to his sisters by deeds of gift executed years before, he could offer no satisfactory proof of his contention – nothing, indeed, except the testimony of certain persons who could swear that the transfer had been a matter of general understanding, often mentioned in their presence, and other evidence of a similarly vague character.
“Of course this was not enough, but my father is a born fighter and would not give up. He secured delay and set about searching everywhere for the missing papers. In the meanwhile he was energetically working to rebuild his own fortunes, and he succeeded. As soon as he had money of his own to fight with, he employed the shrewdest and ablest lawyers he could find to keep up the contest in behalf of his sisters. He has kept that fight up until now, and will keep it up until he wins it or dies. Of course he has himself amply provided for my aunts, so that it isn’t the property but a principle he is fighting for.
“By the way, the shooting ought to be good at Quasi – the place has run wild for so long and is so inaccessible to casual sportsmen. If the rest of you agree, we’ll make our way down there with no long stops as we go. Then we can take our time coming back.”
The others agreed, and after a little Dick Wentworth, who had remained silent for a time, turned to Larry, saying:
“Why did you say it wasn’t much of a story, Larry?”
III
A PROGRAMME – SUBJECT TO CIRCUMSTANCES
The