Books: The Long Chance
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Peter B. Kyne >> The Long Chance
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"I have not yet begun to fight!"
CHAPTER XI
It must have been a sublime faith in that homely adage that there are
more ways of killing a cat than by choking him with butter which moved
Bob McGraw to cudgel his nimble brain until he had discovered exactly
how it would be possible for him to accomplish legally what every
freebooter with an appraising eye on the public domain is troubled to
accomplish illegally. The sole difference between Bob's projected
course and that of his competitors' would be a slightly lessened
profit; but after inventorying a free and easy conscience and posting
it to the credit side of his profit and loss account, Bob knew that
this apparent difference would dwindle until it would be scarcely
perceptible.
Immediately after breakfast on the morning of the day following his
interview with Homer Dunstan, Bob set to work to draw up the circular
letter and contract form, to be submitted later to his prospective
clients. In about fifteen minutes he had outlined the following:
THE PROPOSITION IS THIS
I have information of some state lieu lands which I believe can be
taken up under the State laws at $1.25 per acre. The right to buy them
will very probably have to be established and enforced by legal
proceedings.
Now, this right to purchase state lieu lands is a limited personal
right. (See Political Code, Section 3495, et seq.) I am willing to try
to make YOUR right good to a tract of this land, under the conditions
of the contract herewith. I am willing to stand the expenses of suit to
enforce your right, and to advance for you the legal fees and the first
preliminary payment to the state, on the chance of being able to secure
you something sufficiently valuable to justify you in paying me the
fee provided for in the contract. Read the contract carefully and note
that you retain the right to cancel it and relieve yourself of all
obligation in the matter _by abandoning your claim to the land._
READ THE CONTRACT CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU SIGN IT. BE SURE YOU UNDERSTAND
JUST WHAT YOU ARE DOING.
ROBERT MCGRAW.
"That looks like fair warning" mused Mr. McGraw, as he reread this
document. "I defy any man to look between the lines and scent my hocus-
pocus game."
Bob next proceeded to draw up the contract. It was a simple contract,
framed in language that could not fail of comprehension by the dullest
mind. For and in consideration of the sum of one dollar, the receipt
whereof was duly acknowledged, Bob McGraw agreed to furnish, his
applicants for land with certain valuable information, whereby the
applicant would be enabled to file, or tender his application for,
certain state lieu lands, "bounded and particularly described as
follows:" (Here he left a space sufficient for the insertion, at a
later date, of the exact description of the lands he desired; the
descriptions he would glean from maps of the valley on sale in the
United States Land Office in San Francisco.)
He agreed to tender the application of his client to the State Land
Office and to conduct, at his own expense, any litigation that might
arise or become necessary to establish the right of his client to
purchase the land from the state; stipulating, however, that he
(McGraw) should be the sole judge of the necessity for such litigation.
He agreed to pay the filing fees and the first payment on the land,
required at the time of filing the application, and to represent the
applicant before the state land office; also to notify his client, by
registered letter, at the address given him, whenever the application
should be approved; and it was distinctly stipulated that the applicant
should not be required to elect whether or not he would abandon the
application until served with this written notice!
In consideration, also, of the services, fees and costs provided for in
the contract, _Mr. McGraw would make a charge of Three Dollars per
acre for all, or any part, of the land which the applicant might be
awarded the opportunity to purchase;_ this fee to be payable to him,
his heirs or assigns, _if and whenever the application of his
client_ should be duly approved by the Registrar of the State Land
Office.
In consideration of these covenants, the applicant was to bind himself
to pay Mr. Robert McGraw the stipulated fee of Three Dollars per acre,
in addition to the One Dollar and Twenty-five Cents per acre demanded
by the state, _reserving, however, the right to abandon his filing at
any time prior to its approval by the Registrar of the State Land
Office, but pledging himself not to abandon without first furnishing
his attorney (Robert McGraw) with a proper instrument of abandonment,
in order that some other person might be located on the land._ In
addition the applicant was required to state that he was duly
qualified, under the law, to make the application _and that he had
read both the application form and the contract and was familiar with
the section of the code under which he made it._
A critical perusal of the terms of this shrewd contract will readily
convince even a layman that it was perfectly legal. Bob hurled mental
defiance at every legal light in the country to prove collusion and
conspiracy to defraud under that contract. It proved merely that Bob
McGraw was acting in his capacity as a duly authorized attorney-at-law,
seeking to turn an honest penny.
Now, in the first place, the abandonment clause in the contract, while
not holding his client to the contract, nevertheless held the land to
Bob McGraw! He anticipated that, in the event of his success in forcing
the registrar of the state land office to accept and approve the
applications, the land ring would immediately seek out each applicant,
charge the applicant with being a party to a gigantic land fraud
conspiracy and threaten him with a Federal Grand Jury investigation in
case he did not at once abandon his filing! The poor and the ignorant
are easily intimidated, and Bob McGraw had figured on this. In the
event of "cold feet" on the part of his applicant, the applicant would
come to _him,_ to abandon, as per the terms of the contract, but
by that time Bob would have a man with nerve to take his place, and his
scheme would still be impervious to "leaks!" While the land was "tied
up" by a McGraw applicant, Bob knew the enemy could not get it.
When Bob's clients signed that contract, it meant nothing! But the
moment the applications were approved for patent, and the State Land
Office had so notified him, and he, in turn, had so notified his
clients, his clients were no longer his clients. They were his victims!
His contract then constituted a promissory note, and Mr. McGraw knew
enough law to realize that failure to pay a promissory note or perform
a contract is actionable. Should his client repudiate the contract
_prior_ to the approval of the application, he was safe; but to
repudiate it _after_ approval and after Bob McGraw had advanced
him the money to pay for the land--ah, that was a different matter. Bob
McGraw knew he could secure a judgment against his unfortunate client
in any court of law in the country--and the land was good for the
judgment! Having advanced the cash to purchase the land for his
clients, Bob McGraw would hold that deadly contract over their heads as
security for the advance!
Under the terms of the contract, when fulfilled, each client would owe
Bob his three dollars per acre on six hundred and forty acres, or a
total of one thousand nine hundred and forty dollars as a legal
attorney's fee, and to the clients that Bob McGraw intended to select,
a debt of such magnitude would loom up in all the pristine horror of
the end of the world at hand and salvation not yet in sight. With,
malice aforethought the promoter of Donnaville was trading on the
credulity of the very people he planned to benefit! He knew with what
ease the poor rush into debt where the creditor requires nothing down;
he knew also the avidity with which they grasp the first means of
escape from the burden, once it becomes onerous; and at the thought the
villain McGraw chuckled pleasurably.
"Once under the McGraw thumb, and I have them! I'll demand cash on the
nail for my services. They will be unable to pay me. I'll harass them
and threaten to sue them, and then, when I have them thoroughly cowed,
I'll send a secret agent around to buy their land from them at ten
dollars an acre. After using their constitutional right to purchase
lieu lands, they are entitled to a profit on the investment, and
besides, I must show a 'valuable consideration' or have a secret
service operative trailing me.
"However, I will not have sufficient funds on hand to pay them ten
dollars per acre spot cash, so I shall turn over to them their signed
contracts and thus relieve them of that bugbear, and for these three-
dollar contracts they shall credit me with a payment of four dollars
and twenty-five cents per acre on the land! I will secure them for the
balance by a first mortgage on the property! And with that
accomplished, I court an official investigation. Come on, you secret
service operatives, and prove Bob McGraw a crook. I am a crook, and I
know it, but nobody else shall know it and I have never been accused of
talking in my sleep. I'm a crook, but I'm an honest crook, and the ends
justify the means. Besides, I'm going to present every one of my
clients with a cheek for three thousand six hundred and seventy dollars
for the mere scratch of a pen and the use of their constitutional right
to purchase lieu land. Why, I'm a philanthropist! I'm going to make
fifty men happy by giving them a lot of money for something they never
knew they had. Three thousand six hundred and seventy dollars for the
use of one constitutional right, when the market price is a hundred!
McGraw, my boy, this must never leak out. If it does, your sanity will
be questioned, in addition to your morality."
Thus figured Bob McGraw, the sage of Donnaville. Let him but get his
applications past the land ring's tool in the state land office, and a
receipt issued for his first payment, and Donnaville would be no longer
a dream. Should the applications be rejected later on some flimsy
pretext, he would commence a mandamus suit to enforce the selection of
his lands, and force action of the pending applications of the land
ring, whereby they so artfully "tied up the basis" of exchange. If he
should find himself opposed by a corrupt judge who should rule against
him, he would not be daunted. If beaten in the Superior Court he would
appeal the case to the United States Circuit Court, for Bob McGraw had
a sublime faith in the ability of Truth, crushed to earth, to rise
again and kick the underpinning from crookedness and graft, provided
one never acknowledged defeat. And he could go into court with clean
hands, for he broke no law himself and he would induce no one else to
break it, in thought, spirit or action!
The road to Donnaville stretched ahead of him now, smooth and white and
free from ruts, and with but one bridge to cross. For the successful
crossing of that bridge Bob McGraw had not evolved a plan, for he was
merely a human being, and human cunning has its limitations. It was a
bridge which he must cross when he came to it. He only knew that he
must make the effort on a certain day--the day that Owens river valley
should be thrown open to entry. He must be first at the window of the
land office, and once before that window, the future of Donnaville, the
future of Bob McGraw and his sweetheart in San Pasqual, lay in the laps
of the gods. He must manage somehow to get his applications filed that
day, without designating the basis of the exchange of school lands for
the lieu lands which he sought; for that was information which Bob
McGraw did not possess, and should it come into his possession the day
after the valley was opened for entry, it would be worthless; for the
land ring, in the parlance of the present day, would have "beaten him
to it."
To get those precious filings accepted! That was all that worried him
now. Prior to his visit to Homer Dunstan, this task had seemed to Bob
the least of his worries compared with the titanic task of accumulating
the money necessary to pay for the land when the filings should be
approved. Yesterday everything had revolved around the necessity for
thirty-nine thousand dollars, until the contemplation of this monetary
axis had threatened to set his reason tottering on its throne. But that
worry no longer existed. Homer Dunstan had indicated very clearly to
Bob that he considered him insane, but Homer Dunstan had pledged him
the thirty-nine thousand dollars when he could come to him with the
notification from the Registrar of the State Land Office that the lands
had been passed to patent, and Bob knew that Dunstan would keep his
word, provided his death did not occur prior to the granting of the
patents.
The rough draft of the contract having been drawn up to his
satisfaction, Bob sallied forth in search of a public stenographer. He
knew that he had evolved rather a clever scheme, and he was averse to
permitting the details of his plan to fall under the comprehending eye
of some boss printer, whose enterprise might perchance soar beyond the
boundaries of his vocation. So Bob sought, instead, a public
stenographer and had his copy multigraphed by a young lady whose
interest could never, by any possibility, center in anything more than
her fee.
The job was delivered two days later, and with the knowledge that he
had thirty days in which to make the acquaintance of his fifty
prospective clients, Bob resolved to devote one more week to the
problem of still further recruiting his shattered vitality before
getting down to active work.
He spent that week wandering through Golden Gate Park, along the
romantic and picturesque San Francisco water-front, and in moving-
picture shows. Each morning, before starting for the day's
wanderings, he wrote a long letter to Donna and then waited for the
first mail delivery for her letter to him. Those letters came with
unfailing regularity, and in that city where Bob McGraw prowled through
the day, unknown and unnoticed, there was no man so free from the curse
of loneliness as he. The very opening line in Donna's matutinal
greeting--"My Dear Sweetheart"--routed the blue devils that camped
nightly on his worried and harassed soul, as he lay abed and wrestled
with the mighty problems that confronted him. To Bob McGraw those three
words held the open-sesame of life; they gave him strength to cling to
his high, resolve; they whispered to him of the prize of the conflict
which awaited him at the end of his long road to Donnaville, and sent
him forth to face the world with a smile on his dauntless face and a
lilt in his great kind heart.
Time glided by on weary wings, but eventually the day arrived for Bob
to open his campaign. He must clear for action. It was imperative that
he must have his fifty applications filled out and the signatures of
his clients attested before a notary public on the very date upon which
the desert of Owens river valley would be opened for entry, for to have
them dated the day before would nullify them--to arrive with them at
the land office the day after would be too late. Bob was obsessed with
a suspicion that amounted almost to a conviction that the land ring
would endeavor to acquire the desert valley by practically the same
method which he was pursuing, _only for every section of lieu land
upon which they filed, they would be enabled to show a corresponding
loss of school lands._ His line of reasoning had convinced him that
they had caused dummy entrymen to file on worthless lands in some other
part of the state, in order that these bases might appear of record in
the land office as already used, in case of an investigation; he was
equally convinced that these dummy applications had never been acted
upon in the land office, but were being held up there until the land
ring was ready to act, when their dummy entrymen would abandon their
filings on the worthless land, thus throwing the original basis open
for use once more and permitting the land ring to step in with other
dummy entrymen and use the basis for the acquisition of _valuable_
lands. It was absurdly simple when one understood it and took the time
to reason it out.
Of one thing Bob was morally certain. The representative of the land
ring would be on hand, bright and early, to file the dummy
applications. Bob decided, therefore, that the field of his operations
until that eventful day must be confined to the state capital,
Sacramento, where the state land office was located. He must recruit
his little army of applicants from the capital itself, attest their
applications before a notary public after midnight of the day preceding
the opening of the valley for entry, and be first at the filing window
when the land office opened.
Accordingly Bob proceeded to Sacramento. Immediately upon his arrival
he rented a cheap back office, a desk and some chairs, and for the time
being announced himself to the world, through the medium of a modest
sign on his office door, as The Desert Development Company. The
following day he set to work.
He interviewed street sweepers, hotel porters, cab drivers newspaper
reporters, milk-wagon drivers, barkeepers and laborers along the river
docks--in fact every follower of an occupation which Bob judged might
be sufficiently unremunerative to keep its votaries in poverty as long
as they persisted in sticking to it. By discreet questioning he learned
whether the prospective client had money in bank, or was involved in
debt. If the former, Bob terminated his interview and neglected to
return; if the latter, Bob would present the victim with a good cigar
and proceed to unfold a tale of wealth in desert lands.
To these men Bob explained every detail of his proposition and gave
them a copy of his contract form and his explanatory circular attached.
He answered all their questions patiently--and satisfactorily, and he
was particularly insistent upon calling to their attention the fact
that they were not required to put up a single dollar in order to
acquire the land. Naturally, this seeming philanthropy immediately
inspired suspicion and a request for information as to what was in the
deal for Mr. McGraw; whereupon Mr. McGraw would point proudly to that
clause in the contract which stipulated a three-dollar-per-acre fee and
inform them that he had private and reliable information of not less
than two irrigation schemes which were being projected in the valley--
schemes which would give their apparently worthless land a value of at
least ten dollars per acre and enable both Mr. McGraw and his client to
turn a nice little profit together. He showed them where he was
helpless without them and where they were profitless without him, and
to make a profit of three dollars per acre for himself he was willing
to buy the land for them and take their promissory notes in payment.
More: he would agree to carry them for the land until they had an
opportunity to sell out at a profit of at least three thousand dollars!
Mr. McGraw demanded to know if anything could possibly be fairer than
that.
It could not, and the clients were forced to admit it. Win, lose or
draw, it cost them nothing to play the game with Bob McGraw. After all
is said and done the average human being is a gambler and likes long
odds, and Bob's prospective clients were not so deficient in
intelligence as in ready cash. They knew that desert land without
irrigation is worthless; that no man would advance them money to
purchase it at $1.25 per acre unless he saw a profit in the deal for
himself. Consequently, irrigation was the only solution of that
problematic increase in value, and if Mr. McGraw could afford a flyer
so could they.
Bob had foreseen this line of reasoning, for he knew that spot cash is
the bugbear of life and that a good salesman can sell anything provided
he sells it on time. Long before the expiration of the period he had
set himself to accomplish this task, he had signed up fifty eager
applicants for desert land, procured their addresses and then
retired to his little back office to write letters to Donna and await
the rising of the sun on his day of destiny.
The day preceding the one on which the valley would be opened for entry
was a busy one for Bob McGraw. His cash reserve was beginning to run so
low that he decided to save the dollar postage necessary to remind his
clients that they were to meet him in his office at midnight of that
day; consequently, and in view of the fact that his old-time strength
practically had been restored to him, he walked several miles in order
to call upon his clients at their places of employment and secure from
their lips a solemn promise to be on hand at the appointed hour. His
apparent anxiety made them all the more eager to sign up with him, and
not a single client failed him.
This matter attended to, Bob engaged a notary public, with instructions
to meet him at his office at midnight. By eleven-thirty the corridors
of the silent office building were thronged with the eager fifty; at
eleven-forty-five the notary arrived and at exactly one minute past
midnight Bob commenced to sign his clients up. The notarial blanks had
already been filled out and, together with the notary's seal, had been
attached to each contract. In addition to the contract Bob took a
power-of-attorney in duplicate from each applicant; the notary swore
each of the fifty applicants in as many minutes, Bob paid him twenty-
five dollars and he departed; after which Bob made a short speech to
his clients and exhorted them to stand by their guns in the event of
influence being brought to bear upon them to abandon their filings;
whereupon the fifty gave him their promises, collectively and
individually, shook the hand of their benefactor and departed to their
homes.
Nothing now remained for Bob to do except present his fifty
applications for filing at the land office in the morning, and
realizing the truth of that ancient saw anent the early bird and the
resulting breakfast he decided to wait in the office until it should be
time for him to go to the land office. In the meantime, he decided to
while away the lonely hours by a review of his financial status, so he
locked the door and devoted the succeeding five minutes to the
comparatively trifling task of counting his money and figuring on the
outlay necessary to carry him back to San Pasqual. He was horrified to
discover that after providing twelve hundred and fifty dollars for the
registrar of the state land office (in the event that the day of
miracles was not yet past and his filings should be accepted), his
return journey by rail would terminate somewhere in the heart of the
San Joaquin valley. Even after pawning his gun, Mr. McGraw could still
see, in his mind's eye, at least one hundred miles of dusty county road
stretching between him and San Pasqual, and he was not so conceited as
to imagine that he was strong enough to walk a hundred miles with
nothing more tangible than the scenery to sustain him en route.
Moreover, he had promised Donna that they should be married immediately
upon his return. The situation was truly embarrassing, and Mr. McGraw
cast about him for a means to extricate himself from his terrible
predicament. In his agony he saw a flash of light--and smiled as he
realized that it radiated from Mr. Harley P. Hennage's three gold
teeth.
"Saved!" quavered Mr. McGraw. "Good old Harley P! I'll just touch the
old boy for that fifty again, in case I need it. If they accept my
applications, I'll have to assault Harley, and if they decline the
applications I will still have my twelve hundred and fifty. But in the
meantime I'll write to Hennage and tell him frankly just how I'm fixed,
and if it comes to a show-down I'll drop the letter in the mail, return
to San Francisco and wait for him to send me a postal money order."
He turned to his desk, drew a blank sheet of paper toward him and
indited a brief note to Mr. Hennage.
_Dear Harley P.:_
I have just made the discovery that I was too precipitate in paying you
that fifty I owed you for three years. I am a financial wreck on a lee
shore, but with millions in sight, and I will be very grateful if you
will strain your good nature long enough to send me a P. O. order for
the aforesaid fifty, addressing me General Delivery, San Francisco. I
will explain the transaction to you when I get back to San Pasqual,
merely mentioning in passing that until you send me the fifty the
prospects for my immediate return are, to say the least, somewhat
vague. I never could walk very far in my Sunday shoes.
Thanking you, my dear Harley, until you are better paid, believe me to
be
Your sincere friend, ROBERT MCGRAW.
This communication Bob folded and sealed in an envelope. He was too
preoccupied in the folding to notice that he had folded two sheets of
paper instead of one. The second sheet was a spare copy of his
marvelous contract for the acquisition of desert lands, which through
some accident had become mixed, with the printed side up, among some
loose sheets of blank legal-size typewriter paper which the
unconventional Robert had purchased in the pursuit of his
correspondence with Donna. His choice of letter paper was
characteristic of Bob. He was a man who required room in which to
operate.
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