Not that he was uninformed on these topics. Quite the reverse. He was a rotund, florid little man, with twinkling, humorous eyes, which could bore like augers on occasion, and a mouth as firm and close as a steel trap. His name was William Bates Rapp, and his specialty was corporation law. He was counsel for the Western Airline Railway, and just then he was pretending to play billiards with its president, Cromwell York.
York, who also was pretending to play billiards with Rapp, was a dogged gentleman who was accustomed to take his pound of flesh whenever he could not obtain, on some pretext, two pounds. His subordinates said that he worked twenty-five hours a day, which gives, if you consider it, an advantage of some fifteen days per annum. He was in the grip of his business, body and soul. It fascinated him, dominated him more and more as the years went on, as his own fortune and his interests increased. He was continually reaching out for more territory, and in so doing he came in hostile contact with other railway men, also gunning for the same game. Occasionally, therefore, they gunned for each other. When York was hit he took his medicine; when he hit the other fellow he chose as vital a spot as he could. Even as he played billiards his mind was elsewhere, which accounted in part for his poor success at the game.
"Speaking about Prairie Southern," said he, "we have about decided to take it over."
Rapp sighed. "I'm not a perpetual-motion legal machine, York. Won't that keep till to-morrow?"
"We pay you a big enough retainer," said York, with the frankness of years of intimacy. "What do you suppose we do it for?"
"Principally, I imagine, to keep you out of jail," Rapp retorted, with equal frankness. "I've done it so far, but——" He shook his head forebodingly. "Well, if you will talk, come and sit down. I'm tired of this. Now, then, about Prairie Southern: have they come to the end of their rope, or did you pull it in a little for them?"
"I didn't need to," said York. "They have tied themselves up in hard knots. We don't particularly want the road; but, as matters stand, we can buy it cheaply. Later we might want it, and it would undoubtedly cost more. Besides, I don't want Hess to get hold of it as a feeder to his lines."
"Jim Hess is a sort of bugbear to you," said Rapp. "You'll keep prodding him till he horns you one of these days."
"Two can play at that," York replied grimly.
"There's mighty little play about Jim Hess when he goes on the warpath," Rapp commented. "Well, let's get the worst over. There's short of three hundred miles of this Prairie Southern, as I understand it. It runs somewhere near the foothills. The country doesn't grow anything yet. The only reason for its building was a coal-mine boom that petered out. Its bonding privilege was one of the most disgraceful bits of jobbery ever lobbied through a corrupt little legislature. It was a political scandal from its birth. It is burdened with a multitude of equities. It never has paid, and likely it never will pay. You know these things as well as I do. I'm hanged if I see why you want it."
"If we don't get it some one else will," said York. "I wish you'd look into their affairs, and see what sort of a legal bill of health they have. I am putting our accountants on their finances."
"All right," said Rapp. "I'll give 'em a bill of health like a pest-house record. Their bonded indebtedness is shocking, and they have all sorts of litigation pending against them."
"I'll tell you one thing," York said. "They have a large land grant."
"Which they got because the land was worthless."
"Supposed to be worthless," York amended.
Rapp cocked his head like a terrier that suddenly discerns a large and promising rat hole. "Come through," he said.
"This land," York explained, "is in the dry belt. It was supposed to be worth nothing when the P.S. charter was granted, and so the government of that day was generous with it. As a matter of fact, the land is good when irrigated; and it can be irrigated—or most of it can."
"How do you know it's any good?"
"There are some first-class ranches down there."
"If that is so, why don't P.S. put the lands on the market? They need the money."
"No advertising or selling machinery, and not enough money to put in an irrigation system, and no credit. They can't afford to wait."
Rapp considered. "Plenty of water for these lands?"
"That's a question," York admitted. "The main water down that way is a river called the Coldstream. The ranchers have their water records, which of course take precedence of any we might file. There may be enough—I don't know. That will have to be ascertained. But if this stuff can be irrigated it can be sold. Our land department will look after that."
"Almost any sort of an irrigated gold brick can be sold nowadays," said Rapp cynically. "I admit that you have some pretty fair con men in your land department."
"We never put anything on the market that wasn't a perfectly legitimate proposition," said York, with dignity.
"Depends on what you call 'legitimate,'" said Rapp. "I've read some of your land advertising. If you sold shares by means of a prospectus no more truthful, you'd do time for it. You know blame well you unload your stuff on people who depend on selected photographs and pretty pen pictures of annual yields per acre. Of course, any man who buys land without seeing it deserves exactly the sort of land he gets. I'm not criticising at all—merely pointing out that I know the rudiments of the game."
"Help us play it, then," said York. "Dig into Prairie Southern, and see what we get for our money."
William Bates Rapp did so. By various complicated and technical documents he grafted the moribund Prairie Southern upon the vigorous trunk of Western Airline, after which he washed his hands of the operation by a carefully worded letter accompanying a huge bill of costs, and dismissed the matter from his mind; for it was only one transaction among a score of more important ones.
Later, the experts of the Airline descended on the carcass of poor old Prairie Southern, to see what had best be done with the meat upon its bones, and the result was fairly satisfactory. The traffic was inconsiderable, but showed signs of improvement. The land hunger was upon the people, frightened by the cry that cheap lands were almost at an end. Many were stampeded into buying worthless acres which they did not want, in the fear that if they delayed there would be nothing left to buy. Fake real-estate schemes—colonies, ten-acre orchard tracts, hen farms, orange groves, prune plantations—flourished over the width and length of a continent, and promoters reaped a harvest. Land with a legitimate basis of value doubled and trebled in price between seasons.
It was a period of inflation, of claim without proof, of discounting the future. Men raw from the city bought barren acres on which practical farmers had starved, in the expectation of making an easy, healthful living. And in this madness the lands of the old Prairie Southern grant, at one time supposed to be worthless, justified the foresight of Cromwell York by reaching a value in excess of even his expectations. For, given water, they were very good lands indeed, and Western Airline was prepared to sell them with a water guarantee.
This took time; and it was two years after the acquisition of Prairie Southern that York, a trifle grayer and a shade more dictatorial than before, was one morning handed a card by his secretary. He frowned at it, for the name was strange.
"Who's this Casey Dunne, and what does he want?"
Dunne, it appeared, wished to see him in connection with the Coldstream irrigation project, then well under way. He owned property in that vicinity; he also represented certain other ranchers.
"Lawyer?" snapped York. The secretary thought not. "Show him in."
When Dunne entered York did not immediately look up from his papers. This was for general effect. When he did look he became conscious that even as he was measuring