covered what next when the driller he had sent up to Arkansas in
charge of his rig one day came into the office in great agitation. The
man's story caused his employer's face to whiten.

"_Salted!_ I--don't believe it." Nelson seized his head in his hands.
"Oh, my God!" he gasped. Misfortunes were coming with a swiftness
incredible. Salted! Victimized, like the greenest tenderfoot! A small
fortune sunk while the whole country was still chuckling over the
Jackson scandal! This _was_ a nightmare.

Henry was glad that his father was in Tulsa in conference with some
other bankers over that Avenger offset money, otherwise there was no
telling to what extreme the old man's rage would have carried him at
this final calamity. And that whining, coughing crook, that bogus
farmer, was in Arizona--or elsewhere--out of reach of the law! The
younger Nelson turned desperately sick. If this was not more of Gray's
work, it was the direct result of the curse he had called down.

"Does anybody know?" Henry inquired, after he had somewhat recovered
his equilibrium.

"Nobody but us fellows."

"You--you mustn't shut down. You've got to keep up the bluff
until--until I get time to turn."

"You going to bump off that land to somebody else?"

"What do you think I'm going to do?" Nelson was on his feet now and
pacing his office with jerky strides. "Take a loss like that?" He
paused and glared at the bearer of bad tidings, then growled: "What are
you grinning about? Oh, you needn't say it. You want yours, eh? Is that
it?"

"Well--it's worth something to turn a trick like this."

"How much?"

"It's a big deal. It'll take something substantial--something
substantial and paid in advance--to make our boys forget all the
interesting sights they've seen. But I'd rather leave the amount to
you, Henry. You know me; I wouldn't be a party to a crooked deal, not
for anything, except to help you out--"

"How much?" the banker repeated, hoarsely.

But the field man merely smiled and shrugged, so, with a grunt of
understanding, Henry seated himself and wrote out a check to bearer,
the amount of which caused him to grind his teeth.

Now it was impossible to dispose of a large holding like that Arkansas
tract at a moment's notice. In order to evade suspicion, it was
necessary to go about it slowly, tactfully, hence the financier moved
with as much circumspection as possible. His careful plans exploded,
however, when he met Calvin Gray a day or s