TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS

Captain Ozias Littlefield's lack of curiosity regarding his cousin's wooden leg might have impressed a more mature mind than Carolyn May's as being rather suspicious. The little girl had suffered so many disappointments in this very matter that she merely sighed and hoped for a better occasion.

For here came Mr. Oly Littlefield himself with the pail of milk, and the matter could not be further discussed. While the captain had been relating the swordfish story he had put the chowder kettle on the pot-stove in which a brisk fire of driftwood was burning, and was trying out the pork.

Into the hot fat went the sliced onions to be browned to a golden hue; then the clam liquor into which when it was boiling the captain dumped the potatoes cut into cubes. When these were almost tender the chopped clams were put in, the mess was seasoned, and the scalded milk added carefully that it might not curdle in the chowder. When this was simmering several ship's biscuits were thrown in and the covered pot set upon the stove shelf until the seasoning should be well worked through the chowder.

"This here's a re'l fisherman's chowder," Mr. Oly Littlefield said. "I can make it myself but it never turns out same's Ozy's does. I'm like either to scorch mine or curdle it. There's a knack about gittin' it jest right, I don't dispute."

"There's a knack about doin' most things," said the captain dryly. "And it's practice gives ye the knack. Ye never did have the patience to l'arn a thing right, Oly."

The cousins wrangled in an apathetic way all through the meal. But Carolyn May knew that was their habit, and perhaps they would not have been happy had they lived together in perfect peace.

Altogether the little girl spent a very pleasant day with the Double O's, and Captain Littlefield "set her a piece on the way" when she started homeward along the patrol path.

They met Surfman Number Two, who was the captain's nephew, walking his beat to the key-box at the breach, having set forth from the life-saving station at four o'clock. It was foggy off at sea, and he said it would be thick inshore in an hour or so.

"This leetle gal will get to Barzilla's long before that," said Captain Littlefield. "So I'll stub back along o' you, Cephas. Good-bye, Car'lyn."

"Good-bye, sir," said Carolyn May. "And I had a nawful nice time with you and Mr. Oly. Come on, Princey! We must run home now."

"Guess 'twill be safe 'nough to let the child go home alone?" said the captain to Cephas.

"Ain't nobody but Island folks along yon', 'cept two fellers 't took supper with us at the station," said Cephas. "Nice 'nough men, fur off folks. Give us all see-gars. I notice they set off after me an' Alec Rose started out on our beats at eight bells. Yon's them, now."

He waved his hand. Two figures were coming over the distant rise beyond Barzilla Ball's cottage, at that distance seeming no larger than Carolyn May herself. The little girl and the dog were running blithely, following the patrol path.

"All right," returned Captain Littlefield, and turned back along the beaten track with his nephew.

The little girl and her dog had passed Uncle Smith Dodge's house before she noticed the two men approaching. Although the dusk was falling, she recognized the saturnine man at that distance.

Now, Carolyn May was no "'fraid-cat." She would have scorned such a title had any of her schoolmates flung it at her. But that dark-faced man with his black, thick brows and glittering eyes, made her shudder. Nor did she like René much, and she soon recognized the chauffeur as the second man coming along the path.

She ran back of Uncle Smith's calf pen to hide until the two men should have passed. From that spot she suddenly observed a third man who had just climbed from the beach. It was Baby Laird's father, and he was headed homeward, too. She was about to join him, when the two others showed that they knew and were about to speak to the baby's father.

It was the saturnine man who addressed himself to Joe Bassett, while René held back.

"Well, well!" he said, advancing with hand outstretched. "I wondered why I did not run across you. I declare! You look well. Brown as a berry. It must agree with you here. And the wife and baby?"

"Are well," said the young man. He quite ignored the extended hand of the secretary. His glance went to the chauffeur and he nodded. "Howdy, René?" he said.

"Thank you, sir. I enjoy my health," the French Canadian said; but he did not draw near.

"I failed to hear from you in regard to that proposition I was enabled to make you, Mr. Joe," the other man said, dropping his voice. "That Arizona proposition is still open for you."

"The offer was inspired, I presume?" young Bassett ventured.

"Naturally I could not have spoken of the mining company's need without his permission," was the reply.

"And if I do not accept?"

"Mr. Joe," said the man, urgently, "you know without being told by me that when the old man is determined on a thing he will carry it through, in spite of everything. If he has made up his mind that you and yours will suit him better in Arizona than here, to Arizona you'll go, or you'll be sorry."

"If I can make my living here in the East—Why! Inness, I've a chance to stay right here on this island and go into partnership with a man in a good, paying business."

"If you do you'll be sorry," snapped the secretary. "And perhaps your partner will suffer, too. The old man is ruthless—you know that! Once he is determined—"

Joe Bassett's head had come up like that of a spurred horse, and his shoulders squared themselves with a gesture of decision.

"Who is he, that he should rule all the world?" he demanded hotly. "I'll not be driven, Inness!"

"You mean you do not wish to be driven," said the other, with sarcasm. "But he will reach you."

"Let him try."

"You make my duty very unpleasant," said the dark man, in a different tone. "You know that what I am told to do I must do."

"Yes. I know your kind," returned Bassett, not without a sneer. "If the lion hunts, the jackal follows the trail."

"Is that the best word you have for a man who would be your friend, Mr. Bassett?" exclaimed the secretary, with anger.

"I think it is," Bassett said coldly. "I doubt your friendship, Inness. I have always doubted it. And I don't feel like being driven from pillar to post by anybody. If I suffer him to do this to me now, he'll do it again if he feels so inclined. If he is going to hound me, let him begin it here—around New York, where he is known and I am known. You can give him that word, if you like."

"I tell you right now," Inness returned warmly, "that if you try to establish yourself in any way on this island, for instance, he will ruin you, and whoever you are in partnership with."

"It was quite unintentional, I assure you, that I selected this island to live on. He never used to come here. With half a dozen summer homes to select from, what brings him to Block Island, I wonder?"

"It is his wife, I believe. She doesn't care for the old places," said the secretary.

"Oh!" and Bassett turned away his face that the other should not see its expression. After a moment Inness said:

"I'd like a straight answer, Mr. Joe. Will you take this chance I—we—offer you?"

"You have had a straight answer. It is, 'No.'"

Bassett turned on his heel and pushed on along the patrol path toward the Ball cottage. The secretary and René stood for a minute whispering and looking after him before they moved in the opposite direction. The seafog was now trailing in long whisps over the edge of the bluff. The night was falling.

Not until the two were quite hidden in the mist did Carolyn May come out of hiding. She had not heard much of what passed between the secretary and Joe Bassett, and she had not understood what it signified at all. But she felt that she could not join Baby Laird's father on the way home.

Besides, if the baby's father was mixed up with that dark-complexioned man whom she so disliked, she felt that she could speak to nobody regarding this meeting on the patrol path.

It did not, however, cause her to forget the ten thousand dollars she had heard the secretary and René talking about earlier in the day. To Carolyn, who loved to play the game of "If I Were Rich," ten thousand dollars opened a vista of possibilities that fed her imagination for several days.

She had gained the impression from what the two men had said that her friend at the Orowoc House had lost the ten thousand dollars. She wondered if he knew he had lost it. Perhaps he had so much money that he couldn't count it all, and he had not yet missed the ten thousand in question.

If she or the pale lady had ten thousand dollars, how much they could do with it! Why, perhaps the pale lady could buy back the beautiful old home she had more than once told Carolyn about—the rambling old Colonial house with the pillars in front and the lawn slanting down to the Hudson River. And she could go to Country Clubs, and have parties, and ride in automobiles, just as she had before she had married Baby Laird's father.

Sometimes Carolyn May had wondered if her friend was not just a little sorry that she had ever married at all. She had been so poor, and had seen so much trouble since that time. And she was still so beautiful, with her shining hair and delicate complexion, that it seemed almost wicked (Carolyn had heard her mother say this) that the pale lady could not wear clothes befitting her beauty.

Here they were—the "Lairds," as Carolyn May always thought of them—living again almost from hand to mouth; for what the man could do for Barzilla barely paid for their food and lodging. In the evening he often sat alone on the stone bench outside the cottage smoking, and did not even speak to the pale lady, nor to anybody else.

Indeed, he must have done something very, very wrong, Carolyn thought sadly, for everybody to so look at him askance. She was tempted—her tender little heart was fairly wrenched by the sight of his silent woe—to climb up beside him and try to give him comfort. But somehow, from the very first, Carolyn of the Sunny Heart had found Joe Bassett difficult. He was one who shrank from revealing his heart even to a child.

She understood that it was money matters that troubled him. If they only had that ten thousand dollars those two men had talked about! If the pale lady had so much money, the little girl was sure, she would buy nothing less than a gold carriage for Baby Laird and a beautiful fur robe to put in it for the winter. And then the baby's father could do what Barzilla wanted him to do, whatever that was, and they would all be happy again.

"Wouldn't you?" she asked the pale lady one day, as she sat beside her and the baby was asleep.

Carolyn had been thinking so hard about the ten thousand dollars and about her friend's trouble, that she came out plump with this query without realizing that she spoke aloud.

"Wouldn't I what, Carolyn May?" asked the pale lady from the hammock.

"Be happy again if you had all that money?" said the child.

"I do not know what you are talking about, my dear," the pale lady confessed.

"Oh, of course you don't!" exclaimed Carolyn, laughing. "What am I thinking of? You don't know about that ten thousand dollars, do you?"

"What ten thousand dollars, child?"

"That my friend from the Orowoc House lost."

"Your friend—Did he tell you he lost such a sum?" the pale lady asked with surprise.

"Oh, no! Maybe he doesn't know about it. But I do."

"Goodness, Carolyn May!" exclaimed her friend, "how could you learn such a secret if the gentleman did not tell you himself? And you don't suppose for a moment that he could lose such a sum without knowing it?"

"Why, I'm sure," the little girl explained, "that those two men who know all about it never told him."

The pale lady saw that there really was something in this matter besides a flight of Carolyn's imagination. She tried to get at the foundation of the little girl's surprising statement.

On her part Carolyn May endeavoured to explain about the dark-browed man and René the chauffeur. The little girl felt some embarrassment, as she had all along, about speaking of the time when her friend's baby carriage was wrecked by the automobile that René drove, so she slurred over that fact now. The pale lady did not grasp the significance of the couple at the Orowoc House being the same who had occupied the automobile when the accident near Central Park had happened.

She did, however, gain the idea that there were men about of whom Carolyn felt some fear. She did not wish to create any anxiety in Mrs. Cameron's mind by speaking to her about it. But when her husband came home, she took him into her confidence regarding Carolyn May's remarkable story.

"I wonder if it is quite safe for her to run about this wild country as she does?" was her concluding observation. "Those men—"

Joe Bassett had a suspicion as to who the two men were, in spite of the description Carolyn had given his wife: "One of them's a dark, scowly man, and the other talks funny."

"I'll look them up," Bassett said hastily to his wife. "I do not think they are people who will harm Carolyn May."

"But what do you suppose it was they were talking about when she overheard them? Ten thousand dollars! Can they be intending to rob that man at the Orowoc House?"

"More likely they have robbed him already," her husband said. "But I will look into it, if you are afraid for Carolyn. I won't go out with Barzilla tomorrow."

"Oh, Laird! Can't we possibly meet Barzilla's offer? 'Great trees from little acorns grow,' you know, my dear," and she tried to smile. "A fish-packing business may lead to greater things. And this seems so good a chance for you—"

"But if we have no money, Girl?"

"Isn't it possible for you to borrow it of any friend? Oh, my dear! I shrink from that journey to Arizona. Think! if we got there and were stranded? This may be a trick of that man you call Inness. You know, Laird, you do not trust him."

"True. But his employer must be behind the offer. It is the first spark of interest he has shown in our affairs since I left home."

"And is it interest in our well-being now?" she cried. "Oh! I wish I could believe it, Laird. But I am afraid of your father—I am! I am!"

"Hush, Girl! Don't talk that way. Yet, I have no means of knowing what is in his mind regarding us," he added, sadly.

"Why, Laird!" she cried desperately, "the man who thinks so much of Carolyn and whose wife has taken such a fancy to the baby would be more our friend than your father. Why won't you go to see him at the Orowoc House? Barzilla says he made an open offer to help you—"

"Without knowing who I am," interrupted Bassett hoarsely.

"What of that? Are you too proud to accept a business favour—for my sake? For Baby Laird's sake?"

"You know whether I love you or not, Girl," he said, his voice broken, but turning his face aside that she should not see his emotion. "If it was possible I would do as you—and Barzilla—ask. I will accept what my father offers me, through Inness, if I must; but I cannot beg money of any man. And to go to the Orowoc House on such an errand would be begging."

She said no more. Her beautiful eyes filled and she bent her head, hiding her face from him. Bassett stared down at her with strange yearning in his countenance. Yet he whispered: "I cannot do that—I cannot!"

It was a significant moment in their lives. After that even Carolyn May saw that there was a rift in the bond of perfect love and confidence that had heretofore existed between the pale lady and her husband.