So Dad asked about Eli, and the development of the Third Revelation. Only three or four days after Eli had made his announcement in the Paradise Church, there had come a deputation from the church at Roseville, saying that they had heard the fame of Eli’s miracles, and would he come and preach to them. And Eli preached, and the signs were manifested, and so the new prophet grew bolder. Now he was being driven about the country in somebody’s costly limousine, and in the back part of the car was a stack of the crutches of people who had been “healen.” These crutches would be set up in sight of each new congregation, and nearly always they were added to; and there fell over the head of the prophet a shower of silver dollars and half dollars, and coins, wrapped in banknotes, Eli had now given himself a title; he was the Messenger of the Second Coming, and the hour of Christ’s return to earth was to be made known through him. Sometimes whole congregations would be swept off their feet and converted to the True Word; or again, some would be converted, and there would be a split, and a new church in that place.
“How do you suppose he works it?” Dad asked.
“He really does cure people,” said Paul; “there are some about here you can talk to. I’ve been reading a book on suggestion; it seems that kind of thing has been going on for thousands of years.”
“Does he send any money home to his folks?” Dad asked.
And Paul smiled, rather grimly. “The money is sacred,” he said; “it belongs to the Holy Spirit, and Eli is His treasurer.”
VII
Next morning they set forth after trout; and on the way they stopped to see Mr. Hardacre. Before they went in, Dad cautioned Bunny, “Now don’t you say a word, and don’t make any faces. Jist let me handle this.” They entered, and Mr. Hardacre said that he had an offer from young Bandy, speaking for his father, to sell the ranch for twenty thousand dollars. Bunny’s heart leaped, and it was well that Dad had warned him, for he wanted to cry out, “Take it, Dad! Take it!” But he caught himself, and sat rigid, while Dad said, “Holy smoke, what does the fellow take us for?”
Mr. Hardacre explained, there was about twenty acres of good land on this tract; and Dad said all right, call that a hundred an acre, and the improvements, say four thousand, that meant young Bandy was trying to soak them fourteen dollars an acre for his thousand acres of rocks. He must think he had a sucker on his hook.
“To tell the truth, Mr. Ross,” said the agent, “he knows you’re an oil man, and he thinks you’re going to drill this tract.”
“All right,” said Dad. “You jist tell him to hunt round and find somebody to drill his own tract, and if he gets any oil, I’ll drill mine. Meantime, the land I got now will raise all the quail the law will let me shoot in a season.”
The end was that Dad said he would pay twelve thousand cash, and otherwise he’d forget it; and after they had got into the car and started the engine, Bunny whispered, “Gee whiz, Dad, aren’t you taking a chance?” But Dad said, “You let him stay in pickle a while. I got all the land I can drill right now.”
“But Dad, he might get someone else to drill it!”
“Don’t you worry! You want that land, because you got a hunch; but nobody else has got any hunches around here, and young Bandy’ll get tired after he’s tried a while. Let’s you and me go a-fishin’.”
So they went, and drew beautiful cold shiny trout out of a little mountain lake, and late in the evening they got back to the Rascum place, and Paul fried the fish, and the three of them had a gorgeous supper, and afterwards Dad smoked a cigar and asked Paul all sorts of questions about science. Dad said he wished he had-a got that kind of education when he was young, that was a sort of stuff worth knowing; why didn’t Bunny study biology and physics, instead of letting them fill his head up with Latin and poetry, and history business about old kings and their wars and their mistresses, that wasn’t a bit of use to nobody?
Next morning they said goodbye to Paul, and went back into the mountains, and spent most of the day getting fish; and then they set out for Beach City, and got in just about bedtime. Bunny went back to school, and his new duties as treasurer for the baseball team; and Dad set to work putting four more wells on the Armitage tract, and three on the Wagstaff tract. And meantime the nations of Europe had established for themselves two lines of death, extending all the way across the continent; and millions of men, as if under the spell of some monstrous enchantment, rushed to these lines to
