"Well, let's see what Coplen has to say in the morning. If it can be settled within reason I suppose we better give up."

"That's my view now, and the estate bein' left as simply as it was, we can make in the payments unbeknownst to the folks."

They said good-night, and Percival went off to dream that a cab-horse of mammoth size was threatening to eat Miss Milbrey unless he drove it to Spokane Falls and bought two million millinery shops.

When he was jolted to consciousness they were in the switching yard at b.u.t.te, and the car was being coupled to the rear of the train made up for Montana City. He took advantage of the stop to shave. By the time he was dressed they were under way again, steaming out past the big smelters that palled the sky with heavy black smoke.

At the breakfast-table he found Uncle Peter and Coplen.

"I'm inclined," said the lawyer, as Percival peeled a peach, "to agree with your grandfather. This woman--if I may use the term--is one of the nerviest leg-pullers you're ever likely to strike."

"Lord! I should hope so," said Percival, with hearty emphasis.

"She studied your father and she knew him better than any of us, I judge. She certainly knew he was liable to go at any time, in exactly the way he did go. Why, she even had a doctor down from 'Frisco to Monterey when they were there about a year ago--introduced him as an old friend and had him stay around three days--just to give her a private professional opinion on his chances. As to this will, the signature is undoubtedly genuine, but my judgment is she procured it in some way on a blank sheet of paper and had the will written above on sheets like it. As it conforms to the real will word for word, excepting the bequests to her, she must have had access to that before having this one written. Of course that helps to make it look as if the testator had changed his mind only as to the one legatee--makes it look plausible and genuine. The witnesses were of course parties to the fraud, but I seriously question our ability to prove there was fraud.

We think they procured a copy of the will we kept in our safe at b.u.t.te through the clerk that Tafe fired awhile back because of his drinking habits and because he was generally suspicious of him. Of course that's only surmise."

"But can't we fight it?" demanded Percival, hungrily attacking the crisp, brown little trout.

"Well, if we allowed it to come to a contest, we might expose the whole thing, and then again we might not. I tell you she's clever. She's shown it at every step. Now then, if you do fight," and the lawyer bristled, as if his fighting spirit were not too far under the control of his experience-born caution, "why, you have litigation that's bound to last for years, and it would be pretty expensive. I admit the case is tempting to a lawyer, but in the end you don't know what you'll get, especially with this woman. Why, do you know she's already, we've found, made up to two different judges that might be interested in any litigation she'd have, and she's cultivating others. The role of Joseph," he continued, "has never, to the best of my belief, been gracefully played in the world's history, and you may have noticed that the members of the Montana judiciary seem to be particularly awkward in their essays at it. In the end, then, you'll be out a lot of money even if you win. On the other hand, you have a chance to settle it for good and all, getting back everything--excepting the will, which, of course, we couldn't touch or even concede the existence of, but which would, if such an instrument _were_ extant, be destroyed in the presence of a witness whose integrity I could rely upon--well--as upon my own. The letters which she has, and which I have seen, are also such as would tend to substantiate her claims and make the large bequests to her seem plausible--and they're also such letters as--I should infer--the family would rather wish not to be made public, as they would be if it came to trial."

"Jest what I told him," remarked Uncle Peter.

"What she'll hold out for I don't know, but I'd suggest this, that I meet her attorney and put the case exactly as I've found it out as to the will, letting them suspect, perhaps, that we have admissions of some sort from Hornby, the clerk, that might damage them. Then I can put it that, while we have no doubt of our ability to dispose of the will, we do wish to avoid the scandal that would ensue upon a publication of the letters they hold and the exposure of her relations with the testator, and that upon this purely sentimental ground we are willing to be bled to a reasonable extent. The One Girl is a valuable mine, but my opinion is she'll be glad to get two million if we seem reluctant to pay that much."

With that gusto of breakfast-appet.i.te which arouses the envy of persons whose alimentation is not what it used to be, Percival had devoured ruddy peaches and purple grapes, trout that had breasted their swift native currents that very morning, crisp little curls of bacon, m.u.f.fins that were mere flecks of golden foam, honey with the sweetness of a thousand fragrant blossoms, and coffee that was oily with richness. For a time he had seemed to make no headway against his hill-born appet.i.te.

The lawyer, who had broken his fast with a strip of dry toast and a cup of weak tea, had watched him with unfeigned and reminiscent interest.

Grant, who stood watchful to replenish his plate, and whose pleasure it was to see him eat, regarded him with eyes fairly dewy from sympathy.

To A. L. Jackson, the cook, on a trip for hot m.u.f.fins, he observed, "He eats jes' like th' ole man. I suttin'y do love t' see that boy behave when he got his fresh moral appet.i.te on him. He suttin'y do ca'y hisse'f mighty handsome."

With Coplen's final recommendation to settle Percival concluded his meal, and after surveying with fondly pleasant regret the devastation he had wrought, he leaned back in his chair and lighted a cigar. He was no longer in a mood to counsel fight, even though he disliked to submit.

"You know," he reminded Uncle Peter, "what that editorial in the Rock Rip _Champion_ said about me when we were over there: 'We opine that the Junior Bines will become a warm piece of human force if he isn't ground-sluiced too early in the game.' Well--and here I'm ground-sluiced the first rattle out of the box."

But the lawyer went over the case again point by point, and Percival finally authorised him to make the best settlement possible. He cared as little for the money as Uncle Peter did, large sum though it was.

And then his mother and sister would be spared a great humiliation, and his own standing where most he prized it would not be jeopardised.

"Settle the best you can," was his final direction to Coplen. The lawyer left them at the next station to wait for a train back to b.u.t.te.

CHAPTER XI.

How Uncle Peter Bines Once Cut Loose

As the train moved on after leaving Coplen, Percival fell to thinking of the type of man his father had been.

"Uncle Peter," he said, suddenly, "they don't _all_ cut loose, do they?

Now _you_ never did?"

"Yes, I did, son. I yanked away from all the hitchin' straps of decency when I first struck it, jest like all the rest of 'em. Oh, I was an Indian in my time--a reg'ler measly hop-pickin' Siwash at that.

"You don't know, of course, what livin' out in the open on bacon and beans does fur a healthy man's cravin's. He gets so he has visions day and night of high-livin'--nice broiled steaks with plenty of fat on 'em, and 'specially cake and preserves and pies like mother used to make--fat, juicy mince pies that would a.s.say at least eight hundred dollars a ton in raisins alone, say nothing of the baser metals. He sees the crimp around the edges made with a fork, and the picture of a leaf p.r.i.c.ked in the middle to vent the steam, and he gets to smellin'

'em when they're pulled smokin' hot out of the oven. And frosted cake, the layer kind--about five layers, with stratas of jelly and custard and figs and raisins and whatever it might be. I saw 'em fur years, with a big cuttin' out to show the cross-section.

"But a man that has to work by the day fur enough to take him through the prospectin' season can't blow any of his dust on frivolous things like pie. The hard-workin' plain food is the kind he has to tote, and I never heard of pie bein' in anybody's grub-stake either.

"Well, fur two or three years at a time the nearest I'd ever get to them dainties would be a piece of sour-dough bread baked on a stove-lid. But whenever I was in the big camps I'd always go look into the bake-shop windows and just gloat.--'rubber' they call it now'days.

My! but they would be beautiful. Son, if I could 'a' been guaranteed that kind of a heaven, some of them times, I'd 'a' become the hottest kind of a Christian zealot, I'll tell you that. That spell of gloatin'

was what I always looked forward to when I was lyin' out nights.

"Well, the time before I made the strike I outfitted in Grand Bar. The bake-joint there was jest a mortal aggravation. Sakes! but it did torment a body so! It was kep' by a c.h.i.n.k, and the star play in the window was a kind of two-story cake with frostin' all over the place--on top and down the sides, and on the bottom fur all I knew, it looked that rich. And it had cocoanut mixed in with it. Say, now, that concrete looked fit to pave the streets of the New Jerusalem with--and a hunk was cut out, jest like I'd always dream of so much--showin' a cross-section of rich yellow cake and a fruity-lookin' fillin' that jest made a man want to give up.

"I was there three days, and every day I'd stop in front of that window and jest naturally hone fur a slice of that vision. The c.h.i.n.k was standin' in the door the first day.

"'Six doll's,' he says, kind of enticin' me.

"He might as well 'a' said six thousand. I shook my head.

"Next day I was there again, yearnin'. The c.h.i.n.k see me and come out.

"'One doll' li'l piece", he says.

"I says, 'No, you slant-eyed heathen,' or some such name as that. But when you're looking fur tests of character, son, don't let that one hide away from you. I'd play that fur the heftiest moral courage _I've_ ever showed, anyway.

"The third day it was gone and a lemon pie was there, all with nice kind of brownish snow on top. I was on my way out then, pushin' the mule. I took one lingerin' last look and felt proud of myself when I saw the hump in the pack made by my bag of beans.

"'That-like flummery food's no kind of diet to be trackin' up pay-rock on,' I says to kind of cheer myself.

"Four weeks later I struck it. And six weeks after that I had things in shape so't I was able to leave. I was nearer to other places 'twas bigger, but I made fur Grand Bar, lettin' on't I wanted to see about a claim there. I'd 'a' felt foolish to have anyone know jest why I was makin' the trip.

"On the way I got to havin' night-mares, 'fear that c.h.i.n.k would be gone. I knew if he was I'd go down to my grave with something comin' to me because I'd never found jest that identical cake I'd been famishin'

fur.

"When I got up front of the window, you can believe it or not, but that c.h.i.n.k was jest settin' down another like it. Now you know how that Monte Cristo carried on after he'd proved up. Well, I got into his cla.s.s, all right. I walked in past a counter where the c.h.i.n.k had crullers and gingerbread and a lot of low-grade stuff like that, and I set down to a little table with this here marble oil-cloth on it.

"'Bring her back,' I says, kind of tremblin', and pointin' to the window.

"The c.h.i.n.k pattered up and come back with a little slab of it on a tin plate. I jest let it set there.

"'Bring it all,' I says; 'I want the hull ball of wax.'

"'Six doll's,' he says, kind of cautious.

"I pulled out my buckskin pouch. 'Bring her back and take it out of that,' I says--'when I get through,' I says.

"He grinned and hurried back with it. Well, son, nothing had ever tasted so good to me, and I ain't say'n' that wa'n't the biggest worth of all my money't I ever got. I'd been trainin' fur that cake fur twenty odd year, and proddin' my imagination up fur the last ten weeks.