The Fighting Shepherdess

"Our time is limited," hinted Mr. Butefish.

"It won't take long to puncture those bubbles," Toomey answered, contemptuously.

Certainly he had made a raise somewhere!

"We will hear your criticisms," replied Mr. Butefish, with the restraint of offended dignity.

"In the first place, everybody knows that the soil in this country sours and alkalies when water stands on it." Toomey spoke as a man who had wide experience. He looked at "Doc" Fussel, who shrivelled with the chagrin that filled him, when Toomey added, "That settles the peppermint bog, doesn't it?

"Take the next proposition: What's the use of car-lines that begin nowhere and end nowhere? A cripple could walk from one end of the town to the other in seven minutes. You couldn't raise enough outside capital to buy the spikes for it.

"Take fossils--a school boy would know that the demand for fossils is limited, and who is sure that the bed is inexhaustible until it's tested. When the government is taking nitrates out of the air in Prouty to make ammunition, you and I will be under the daisies, Governor."

If looks could kill, Toomey would have died standing. But he continued emphatically: "The salvation of Prouty is water. By water I mean the completion of the irrigation project. Gentlemen--I am here to state unreservedly that I can put that enterprise through, providing the stockholders will give me an option upon fifty-one per cent. of the stock. I must have the controlling interest."

Could he have an option? Could he! Only the restraining hand of a neighbor upon his coat tail prevented Walt Scales from hurdling the intervening chairs to reach Toomey to thrust his shares upon him. Hope and skepticism of the genuineness of his assertions commingled in the faces upon which Toomey looked, while he waited for an answer. He saw the doubt and took Prentiss's letter from his pocket. Shaking it at them, he declared impressively: "This communication is from a party I have interested--an old friend of mine of wealth and standing, who will finance the project providing it is as represented, and under the condition I have just mentioned." Toomey himself so thoroughly believed what he said that he carried conviction, although nowadays his veracity under oath would have been questioned.

The prospect of unloading his stock made Hiram Butefish as thirsty as if he had eaten herring, and, overlooking the glass in his excitement, he drank long and deep from the water pitcher before he said tremulously: "Undoubtedly that can be arranged, Mr. Toomey."

It was obvious that the Boosters Club shared its president's opinion. Each quivered with an eagerness to get at Toomey which was not unlike that of a race horse fretting to be first over the starting line. They crowded around him when the meeting was ended, offering their congratulations and their stock to him, but taking care to avoid any mention of the various sums that he owed each and all.