Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [247]
And that is but the beginning.
I must have written you about the claims that Oliver filed on for Bessie and John, nearly a year ago. In his eagerness to come West, John also invested in canal company stock to a considerable extent. A month before, he might have bought a wagon load of it for very little, but by the time he came in, the news of the reformed syndicate had gone around, and there was none for sale except at very inflated prices. So Oliver, thinking he was doing John a favor, and needing money for the building of this house, sold him some of ours–two thousand dollars’ worth, at what was then a bargain.
That stock now stands a good chance of being worthless. When I think of what that much money means to John and Bessie, when I think that it represents my mother’s and father’s lives, and my grandparents’ lives, and great-grandparents’ lives, all the loving labor that went into the Milton orchards and fields, now poured out into a dusty ditch in Idaho! It is bad enough for our money to go that way, but theirs!
And that is not the worst.
The worst is the work of our slippery acquaintance Bradford Burns, the man who so cruelly jilted poor Sidonie. He is one of those who came west looking for the main chance, a lawyer who would do any sort of little job, and was particularly active in land claims. Because he was always an energetic believer in irrigation, the company used him as its representative ; and Oliver, when he was frantically busy completing his Irrigation Survey, and organizing the beginning of the canal work, and getting this house built, and the well drilled, and the road graded, and the trees planted, left a good many details to him.
The other day, just one day after the bad news had come from General Tompkins, Oliver was in Bums’s office and happened to mention the Grant claims.
“The Grant claims?” says Mr. Burns. “What are they?”
“The ones I left with you for preliminary filing,” Oliver said. “A year ago.”
“I guess I don’t remember them,” says Burns. “I file so many I forget. If you left them for filing, I must have filed them. Where are they located? Show me on the map.”
He got the map out and Oliver showed him, two half-sections side by side under the Susan Canal.
“But those are my claims!” exclaims this Mr. Burns. “You told me your relatives weren’t interested, so I filed on them myself.”
“Weren’t interested?” said Oliver. “When did I say anything like that? I left the completed papers with you to be executed.”
“You must have forgotten,” says Burns. “I remember now. You put them on the desk and said they were one thing, at least, you didn’t have to take care of now. You recall telling me that.”
“No,” Oliver said. “I remember nothing of the kind. I said nothing of the kind. What did you do with those papers?”
“Lord,” Burns says, “I suppose I probably threw them away. I wouldn’t have kept them. You said your relatives had decided against filing.”
Augusta, it was your claims he was speaking of, or pretending to speak of–the ones I had urged you to file on simply as a speculation, in the hope that I might by that means lure you and Thomas out to Idaho for a visit. I had written Oliver from Victoria, asking him to start the formalities. And Oliver had told Burns to discard those, after he heard that you weren’t interested. So he couldn’t entirely deny the possibility of a misunderstanding. He made Burns search all his files and drawers, and he checked the Land Office, but of course no papers were found,