Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

he had a wide latitude in particular ramifications. Rather than law, what he followed was Rulings: Office Rulings and precedents. In the complicated and new questions that were being engendered by the state’s development the Commissioner’s ruling was rarely appealed from. Even the courts sustained it when its equity was apparent.

The Commissioner stepped to the door and spoke to a clerk in the other room⁠—spoke as he always did, as if he were addressing a prince of the blood:

“Mr. Weldon, will you be kind enough to ask Mr. Ashe, the state school-land appraiser, to please come to my office as soon as convenient?”

Ashe came quickly from the big table where he was arranging his reports.

“Mr. Ashe,” said the Commissioner, “you worked along the Chiquito River, in Salado County, during your last trip, I believe. Do you remember anything of the Elias Denny three-league survey?”

“Yes, sir, I do,” the blunt, breezy, surveyor answered. “I crossed it on my way to Block H, on the north side of it. The road runs with the Chiquito River, along the valley. The Denny survey fronts three miles on the Chiquito.”

“It is claimed,” continued the commissioner, “that it fails to reach the river by as much as a mile.”

The appraiser shrugged his shoulder. He was by birth and instinct an Actual Settler, and the natural foe of the land-shark.

“It has always been considered to extend to the river,” he said, dryly.

“But that is not the point I desired to discuss,” said the Commissioner. “What kind of country is this valley portion of (let us say, then) the Denny tract?”

The spirit of the Actual Settler beamed in Ashe’s face.

“Beautiful,” he said, with enthusiasm. “Valley as level as this floor, with just a little swell on, like the sea, and rich as cream. Just enough brakes to shelter the cattle in winter. Black loamy soil for six feet, and then clay. Holds water. A dozen nice little houses on it, with windmills and gardens. People pretty poor, I guess⁠—too far from market⁠—but comfortable. Never saw so many kids in my life.”

“They raise flocks?” inquired the Commissioner.

“Ho, ho! I mean two-legged kids,” laughed the surveyor; “two-legged, and barelegged, and towheaded.”

“Children! oh, children!” mused the Commissioner, as though a new view had opened to him; “they raise children!”

“It’s a lonesome country, Commissioner,” said the surveyor. “Can you blame ’em?”

“I suppose,” continued the Commissioner, slowly, as one carefully pursues deductions from a new, stupendous theory, “not all of them are towheaded. It would not be unreasonable, Mr. Ashe, I conjecture, to believe that a portion of them have brown, or even black, hair.”

“Brown and black, sure,” said Ashe; “also red.”

“No doubt,” said the Commissioner. “Well, I thank you for your courtesy in informing me, Mr. Ashe. I will not detain you any longer from your duties.”

Later, in the afternoon, came Hamlin and Avery, big, handsome, genial, sauntering men, clothed in white duck and low-cut shoes. They permeated the whole office with an aura of debonair prosperity. They passed among the clerks and left a wake of abbreviated given names and fat brown cigars.

These were the aristocracy of the land-sharks, who went in for big things. Full of serene confidence in themselves, there was no corporation, no syndicate, no railroad company or attorney general too big for them to tackle. The peculiar smoke of their rare, fat brown cigars was to be perceived in the sanctum of every department of state, in every committee-room of the Legislature, in every bank parlour and every private caucus-room in the state Capital. Always pleasant, never in a hurry, in seeming to possess unlimited leisure, people wondered when they gave their attention to the many audacious enterprises in which they were known to be engaged.

By and by the two dropped carelessly into the Commissioner’s room and reclined lazily in the big, leather-upholstered armchairs. They drawled a good-natured complaint of the weather, and Hamlin told the Commissioner an excellent story he had amassed that morning from the Secretary of State.

But the Commissioner knew why they were there. He had half promised to render a decision that day upon their location.

The chief clerk now brought in a batch of duplicate certificates for the Commissioner to sign. As he traced his sprawling signature, “Hollis Summerfield, Comr. Genl. Land Office,” on each one, the chief clerk stood, deftly removing them and applying the blotter.

“I notice,” said the chief clerk, “you’ve been going through that Salado County location. Kampfer is making a new map of Salado, and I believe is platting in that section of the county now.”

“I will see it,” said the Commissioner. A few moments later he went to the draughtsmen’s room.

As he entered he saw five or six of the draughtsmen grouped about Kampfer’s desk, gargling away at each other in pectoral German, and gazing at something thereupon. At the Commissioner’s approach they scattered to their several places. Kampfer, a wizened little German, with long, frizzled ringlets and a watery eye, began to stammer forth some sort of an apology, the Commissioner thought, for the congregation of his fellows about his desk.

“Never mind,” said the Commissioner, “I wish to see the map you are making”; and, passing around the old German, seated himself upon the high draughtsman’s stool. Kampfer continued to break English in trying to explain.

“Herr Gommissioner, I assure you blenty sat I haf not it bremeditated⁠—sat it wass⁠—sat it itself make. Look you! from se field notes wass it blatted⁠—blease to observe se calls: South, 10 degrees west 1,050 varas; south, 10 degrees east 300 varas; south, 100; south, 9 west, 200; south, 40 degrees west 400⁠—and so on. Herr Gommissioner, nefer would I have⁠—”

The Commissioner raised one white hand, silently, Kampfer dropped his pipe and fled.

With a hand at each side of his face, and his elbows resting upon the desk, the Commissioner sat staring at the map which was spread and fastened there⁠—staring at the sweet and living profile of little Georgia drawn thereupon⁠—at her face, pensive, delicate, and infantile, outlined in a perfect likeness.

When his mind at