So certain was OHara of ultimately cornering the standing timber that he took his time about it, never dreaming that a rival might disturb him in the wilderness of Sagamore County.
He began in the woodland which he had inherited, which ran for a mile on either side of the river. This he leisurely cut, hired a few river drivers, ran a few logs to Foxville, and made money.
Now he was ready to extend business on a greater scale; but when he came to open negotiations with the score or more of landholders, he found himself in the alarming position of a bidder against an unknown but clever rival, who watched, waited, and quietly forestalled his every movement.
It took a long time for OHara to discover that he was fighting a combination of fifteen wealthy gentlemen from New York. Finally, when the Sagamore Club, limited to fifteen, had completed operations, OHara suddenly perceived that he was bottled up in the strip of worthless land which he had inherited, surrounded by thousands of acres of preserved property outwitted, powerless, completely hemmed in. And that, too, with the best log-driving water betwixt Foxville and Canada washing the very door-sill of his own home.
At first he naturally offered to sell, but the clubs small offer enraged him, and he swore that he would never sell them an inch of his land. He watched the new club-house which was slowly taking shape under the trowels of masons and the mallets of carpenters; and his wrath grew as grew the house.
The mans nature began to change; an inextinguishable hatred for these people took possession of him, became his mania, his existence.
His wife died; he sent his child to a convent school in Canada and remained to watch. He did the club what damage he could, posting his property, and as much of the river as he controlled. But he could not legally prevent fishermen from wading the stream and fishing; so he filled the waters with sawdust, logs, barbed-wire, brambles, and brush, choking it so that no living creature, except perhaps a mink, could catch a fish in it.
The club protested, and then offered to buy the land on OHaras own terms. OHara cursed them and built a dam without a fishway, and sat beside it nights with a loaded shot-gun.
He still had a few dollars left; he wanted millions to crush these rich men who had come here to mock him and take the bread out of his mouth for their summers sport.
He had a shrewd young friend in New York, named Amasa Munn. Through this man, OHara began to speculate in every wild-cat scheme that squalled aloud for public support; and between Munn and the wild-cats his little fortune spread its wings of gold and soared away, leaving him a wreck on his wrecked land.
But he could still find strength to watch the spite dam with his shot-gun. One day a better scheme came into his unbalanced brain; he broke the dam and sent for Munn. Between them they laid a plan to ruin forever the trout-fishing in the Sagamore; and Munn, taking the last of OHaras money as a bribe, actually secured several barrels full of live pickerel, and shipped them to the nearest station on the Sagamore and Inland Railway.
But here the club watchers caught Munn, and held him and his fish for the game-wardens. The penalty for introducing trout-destroying pickerel into waters inhabited by trout was a heavy fine. Munn was guilty only in intent, but the club keepers swore falsely, and Peyster Sprowl, a lawyer and also the new president of the Sagamore Club, pushed the case; and Munn went to jail, having no money left to purge his sentence.
OHara, wild with rage, wrote, threatening Sprowl.
Then Sprowl did a vindictive and therefore foolish thing: he swore out a warrant for OHaras arrest, charging him with blackmail.
The case was tried in Foxville, and OHara was acquitted. But a chance word or two during the testimony frightened the club and gave OHara the opportunity of his life. He went to New York and scraped up enough money for his purpose, which was to search the titles of the lands controlled by the Sagamore Club.
He worked secretly, grubbing, saving, starving; he ferreted out the original grants covering nine-tenths of Sagamore County; he disinterred the OHara patent of 1760; and then he began to understand that his title to the entire Sagamore Club property was worth the services, on spec, of any first-class Centre Street shyster.
The club got wind of this and appointed Peyster Sprowl, in his capacity of lawyer and president of the club, to find out how much of a claim OHara really had. The club also placed the emergency fund of one hundred thousand dollars at Sprowls command with carte-blanche orders to arrest a suit and satisfy any claim that could not be beaten by money and talent.
Now it took Sprowl a very short time to discover that OHaras claim was probably valid enough to oust the club from three-quarters of its present holdings.
He tried to see OHara, but the lumberman refused to be interviewed, and promptly began proceedings. He also made his will; for he was a sick man. Then he became a sicker man, and suspended proceedings and sent for his little daughter.
Before she arrived he called Munn in, gave him a packet of papers, and made him burn them before his eyes.
Theyre the papers in my case, he said. Im dying; Ive fought too hard. I dont want my child to fight when Im dead. And theres nothing in my claim, anyway. This was a lie, and Munn suspected it.
When the child, Eileen, arrived, OHara was nearly dead, but he gathered sufficient strength to shove a locked steel box towards his daughter and tell her to keep it from Munn, and keep it locked until she found an honest man in the world.
The next morning OHara appeared to be much better. His friend Munn came to see him; also came Peyster Sprowl in some alarm, on the matter of the proceedings threatened. But OHara turned his back on them both and calmly closed his eyes and ears to their presence.
Munn went out of the room, but laid his large, thin ear against the door. Sprowl worried OHara for an hour, but, getting no reply from the man in the bed, withdrew at last with considerable violence.
OHara, however, had fooled them both: he had been dead all the while.
The day after the funeral, Sprowl came back to look for OHaras daughter; and as he peeped into the door of the squalid flat he saw a thin, yellow-eyed young man, with a bony face, all furry in promise of future whiskers, rummaging through OHaras effects. This young gentleman was Munn.
In a dark corner of the disordered room sat the child, Eileen, a white, shadowy elf of six, reading in the Book of Common Prayer.
Sprowl entered the room; Munn looked up, then coolly continued to rummage.
Sprowl first addressed himself to the child, in a heavy, patronizing voice:
Its too dark to read there in that corner, young one. Take your book out into the hall.
I can see better to read in the dark, said the child, lifting her great, dark-blue eyes.
Go out into the hall, said Sprowl, sharply.
The child shrank back, and went, taking her little jacket in one hand, her battered travelling-satchel in the other.
If the two men could have known that the steel box was in that satchel this story might never have been told. But it never entered their heads that the pallid little waif had sense enough to conceal a button to her own profit.
Munn, said Sprowl, lighting a cigar, what is there in this business?
Ill tell you when Im done, observed Munn, coolly.
Sprowl sat down on the bed where OHara had died, cocked the cigar up in his mouth, and blew smoke, musingly, at the ceiling.
Sprowl sat down on the bed where OHara had died, cocked the cigar up in his mouth, and blew smoke, musingly, at the ceiling.
Munn found nothing not a scrap of paper, not a line. This staggered him, but he did not intend that Sprowl should know it.
Found what you want? asked Sprowl, comfortably.
Yes, replied Munn.
Belong to the kid?
Yes; Im her guardian.
The men measured each other in silence for a minute.
What will you take to keep quiet? asked Sprowl. Ill give you a thousand dollars.
I want five thousand, said Munn, firmly.
Ill double it for the papers, said Sprowl.
Munn waited. Theres not a paper left, he said; OHara made me burn em.
Twenty thousand for the papers, said Sprowl, calmly.
My God, Mr. Sprowl! growled Munn, white and sweating with anguish. Id give them to you for half that if I had them. Cant you believe me? I saw OHara burn them.
What were you rummaging for, then? demanded Sprowl.
For anything to get a hold on you, said Munn, sullenly.
Blackmail?
Munn was silent.
Oh, said Sprowl, lazily. I think Ill be going, then
Munn barred his exit, choking with anger.
You give me five thousand dollars, or Ill stir em up to look into your titles! he snarled.
Sprowl regarded him with contempt; then another idea struck him, an idea that turned his fat face first to ashes, then to fire.
A month later Sprowl returned to the Sagamore Club, triumphant, good-humored, and exceedingly contented. But he had, he explained, only succeeded in saving the club at the cost of the entire emergency fund one hundred thousand dollars which, after all, was a drop in the bucket to the remaining fourteen members.
The victory would have been complete if Sprowl had also been able to purchase the square mile of land lately occupied by OHara. But this belonged to OHaras daughter, and the child flatly refused to part with it.
Youll have to wait for the little slut to change her mind, observed Munn to Sprowl. And, as there was nothing else to do, Sprowl and the club waited.
Trouble appeared to be over for the Sagamore Club. Munn disappeared; the daughter was not to be found; the long-coveted land remained tenantless.
Of course, the Sagamore Club encountered the petty difficulties and annoyances to which similar clubs are sooner or later subjected; disputes with neighboring land-owners were gradually adjusted; troubles arising from poachers, dishonest keepers, and night guards had been, and continued to be, settled without harshness or rancor; minks, otters, herons, kingfishers, and other undesirable intruders were kept within limits by the guns of the watchers, although by no means exterminated; and the wealthy club was steadily but unostentatiously making vast additions to its splendid tracts of forest, hill, and river land.
After a decent interval the Sagamore Club made cautious inquiries concerning the property of the late OHara, only to learn that the land had been claimed by Munn, and that taxes were paid on it by that individual.
For fifteen years the OHara house remained tenantless; anglers from the club fished freely through the mile of river; the name of Munn had been forgotten save by the clubs treasurer, secretary, and president, Peyster Sprowl.
However, the members of the club never forgot that in the centre of their magnificent domain lay a square mile which did not belong to them; and they longed to possess it as better people than they have coveted treasures not laid up on earth.
The relations existing between the members of the Sagamore Club continued harmonious in as far as their social intercourse and the general acquisitive policy of the club was concerned.
There existed, of course, that tacit mutual derision based upon individual sporting methods, individual preferences, obstinate theories concerning the choice of rods, reels, lines, and the killing properties of favorite trout-flies.
Major Brent and Colonel Hyssop continued to nag and sneer at each other all day long, yet they remained as mutually dependent upon each other as David and Jonathan. For thirty years the old gentlemen had angled in company, and gathered inspiration out of the same books, the same surroundings, the same flask.
They were the only guests at the club-house that wet May in 1900, although Peyster Sprowl was expected in June, and young Dr. Lansing had wired that he might arrive any day.
An evening rain-storm was drenching the leaded panes in the smoking-room; Colonel Hyssop drummed accompaniment on the windows and smoked sulkily, looking across the river towards the OHara house, just visible through the pelting downpour.
Irritates me every time I see it, he said.
Some day, observed Major Brent, comfortably, Im going to astonish you all.
How? demanded the Colonel, tersely.
The Major examined the end of his cigarette with a cunning smile.
It isnt for sale, is it? asked the Colonel. Dont try to be mysterious; it irritates me.
Major Brent savored his cigarette leisurely.
Can you keep a secret? he inquired.
The Colonel intimated profanely that he could.
Well, then, said the Major, in calm triumph, theres a tax sale on to-morrow at Foxville.
Not the OHara place? asked the Colonel, excited.
The Major winked. Ill fix it, he said, with a patronizing squint at his empty glass.
But he did not fix it exactly as he intended; the taxes on the OHara place were being paid at that very moment.
He found it out next day, when he drove over to Foxville; he also learned that the Rev. Amasa Munn, Prophet of the Shining Band Community, had paid the taxes and was preparing to quit Maine and re-establish his colony of fanatics on the OHara land, in the very centre and heart of the wealthiest and most rigidly exclusive country club in America.
That night the frightened Major telegraphed to Munnville, Maine, an offer to buy the OHara place at double its real value. The business-like message ended: Wire reply at my expense.
The next morning an incoherent reply came by wire, at the Majors expense, refusing to sell, and quoting several passages of Scripture at Western Union rates per word.
The operator at the station counted the words carefully, and collected eight dollars and fourteen cents from the Major, whose fury deprived him of speech.
Colonel Hyssop awaited his comrade at the club-house, nervously pacing the long veranda, gnawing his cigar. Hello! he called out, as Major Brent waddled up. Have you bought the OHara place for us?
The Major made no attempt to reply; he panted violently at the Colonel, then began to run about, taking little, short, distracted steps.
Made a mess of it? inquired the Colonel, with a badly concealed sneer.
He eyed the Major in deepening displeasure. If you get any redder in the face youll blow up, he said, coldly; and I dont propose to have you spatter me.
He hes an impudent swindler! hissed the Major, convulsively.
The Colonel sniffed: I expected it. What of it? After all, theres nobody on the farm to annoy us, is there?
Wait! groaned the Major wait! and he toddled into the hall and fell on a chair, beating space with his pudgy hands.
When the Colonel at length learned the nature of the threatened calamity, he utterly refused to credit it.
Rubbish! he said, calmly rubbish! my dear fellow; this man Munn is holding out for more money, dye see? Rubbish! rubbish! Its blackmail, dye see?