CHAPTER V

CLIF MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE

Last year Clif had roomed in Number 17 on the floor below with Walter Treat. They had got along exceedingly well together and Clif had a real liking for Walt. So far this term he hadn’t seen Walt for more than an instant, and then merely to shake hands hurriedly and exchange greetings. He wondered whether his former roommate resented his leaving him for Tom. Last spring, when he had announced his intention of pairing with Tom in the fall, Walt had been as nice as pie about it, but somehow since coming back Clif had acquired the notion that Walt had felt a trifle hurt and that he wasn’t going to be as friendly as before. All along Clif had meant to stop in at Number 17 and make a call, but life had been very busy, and then, too, the suspicion that Walt might not care a great deal about seeing him had made it easy to postpone the visit. Now, however, since Walter Treat’s name was down on the list of guests for the housewarming, it was indubitably up to Clif to call and deliver the invitation in person. So on Wednesday, after practice, he parted from Tom in the hall below and made his way to Number 17.

He had tried to prevail on Tom to accompany him, but Tom had presented one excuse after another. As a matter of fact, Tom held much the same doubt as Clif did regarding Walter’s sentiment toward them. He liked Walt, although there had been a time when he couldn’t abide the other’s somewhat high-brow manner. Later, finding that it was no more than a manner and that, even if one did hail from Boston, one could be quite human, he had accepted the other without reservations. Still, he was willing that Clif should make the overtures and determine Walt’s attitude. After all, he told himself extenuatingly, it wasn’t his funeral. Just the same he felt a bit traitorous as he climbed the next flight, and would have gone back had Clif made another plea.

Clif’s knock on the portal of Number 17 was answered by a strange voice and he entered to find the well-remembered room in possession of a startlingly large youth who, seated at the study table, was observing him with grave inquiry. This fellow, Clif reflected, was, of course, Walt’s new roommate, and, although he didn’t know the chap’s name, memory connected him with a momentary glimpse of an astoundingly broad pair of shoulders obtained in the corridor of Middle Hall a day or two before. The large chap had a pleasant voice, and Clif found his drawling enunciation and odd accent interesting.

“Walt’s out,” replied the fellow in reply to Clif’s inquiry. “Maybe you can see that for yourself, though. Guess he’ll be along in two, three minutes, stranger. Have a seat.”

“No, I’d better come again,” said Clif. “It’s getting toward six o’clock. Just tell him, will you, that Clif Bingham called, and that I’ll drop around later.”

“Sure will.” The big chap’s sun-burnt and freckled countenance broke into a wide and engaging smile. “You’re the Bingham that’s on the football team, ain’t you? Pleased to meet you. My name’s Parks.” The speaker arose cumbrously from his seat and held out a broad hand. Accepting it, Clif discovered that Mr. Parks had a mighty grip and that the inside of the hand had something of the quality of a board.

“Thanks,” responded Clif, opening and closing his fingers in an effort to restore circulation. “Very glad to know you, Parks, too. Well, I’ll drop in again.”

“Shucks, better stay and wait for him.” Parks seized a chair and swung it around on one leg with a mighty thud. “Sit down and talk a minute, won’t you?”

“Well――” began Clif again. Then he found himself in the chair, induced partly by Parks’ friendly grin and partly by a big brown hand.

“Can’t get folks to talk to me here,” proceeded the host, returning to his own seat and lowering himself into it with slow, awkward movements. “Seems like every one’s too busy to sit down and pass the time with a fellow. Out where I come from folks is――are more neighborly.”

“Where’s that?” inquired Clif.

“Wyoming. That’s my state. Ever been to Wyoming?” Clif shook his head. He had been through it on a train, but he knew that Parks wouldn’t call that a visit. “You ought to,” the other drawled on. “Finest state in the union. Providence is my town.”

“What?” exclaimed Clif.

“I said Providence was where I live――or did live.” Parks looked a bit wistful after the correction.

“Well, I live in Providence, too,” laughed Clif. “That’s why I was surprised. Providence, Rhode Island, though.”

“You don’t say? Rhode Island? That’s the smallest state there is, ain’t it? Course size ain’t a heap important, though.”

“No, and so I guess your Providence is quite as nice as mine,” replied Clif. Parks grinned. Then he chuckled, and when he chuckled he had an odd trick of pressing curved fingers against his generous mouth, as though laughing was an indiscretion. “Shucks, I’d like for you to see my Providence, Bingham. There ain’t nothing there but about thirty houses. Wasn’t, anyhow. Guess it’s built up some now, maybe. Probably you can’t see the house no more for the oil rigs.”

“Oh, it’s oil country, eh?” asked Clif interestedly. “I’ve always wanted to see an oil field.”

“Guess there ain’t much to see,” said the other gloomily, “but a heap of dirt. Derricks ain’t awful pretty, and once those oil fellows get in, a place just goes to pot. I get sort of homesick for Providence now and then, but, shucks, I guess I wouldn’t want to go back there if I was to see what it looks like now.”

“Are you――I mean are your folks interested in oil wells, Parks?”

“Yeah, some interested. It was like this. Pop owned a mighty nice half section out yonder and we was――were, I mean――doing right well on it. Had one of the finest houses in the country. Pretty, too, Bingham.” The voice sounded wistful. “You could stand on the front porch and see about eighty miles any direction. There was Big Butte, looking like you could throw a clod and hit it, and the Wind River Range over yonder――” Parks’ voice trailed away into silence.

“It must be fine,” agreed Clif after a moment.

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe you wouldn’t admire it so much. You got to be born out thataway, I guess. Anyhow, it was a mighty nice ranch until that ornery oil man came along.” Parks pulled one big foot across a knee and eased further down in the chair. His face was rather square, and the fading light from the windows behind him left it in a warm shadow that blurred the features. Just then Clif felt embarrassingly alien to the big youth. “That was last spring,” Parks went on. “He told pop he figured there was oil on the ranch and wanted to sink a well. Pop told him he’d better figure how to get off the place before he went in for his shotgun. But the fellow come――came back in a little while, and he was a good talker and pop finally said he could go ahead and dig over in a corner of the eighty where the alfalfa was. Pop didn’t put much stock in the fellow’s talk, you see. Course there’d been oil discovered plenty of places before that, but none of ’em was nigh us. Well, they drilled and first thing we knew there was oil spouting all over the alfalfa field! Plumb ruined the crop before they got the cap on.”

“Gosh,” said Clif. “That must have been exciting!”

Parks viewed him dubiously. “I don’t know. Yes, it was exciting, I guess, but pop wasn’t so pleased. We needed that hay, for one thing, and then, of course, a lot more oil fellows came piling in on us with papers all ready to sign. Pop tried to shoo ’em away, but they was like flies――_were_ like flies, I mean――round a sugar barrel! You could swat a few, but others would come instead. They were milling around thick pretty soon, and derricks was going up here and there for miles around. Finally Pop seen――saw there wasn’t any use trying to farm a piece of land that had oil under it and he give――gave up. Say, it’s sort of hard learning to talk grammatical, ain’t it? But maybe you was brought up to it.” Parks sighed and shook his head. “Me, I’m having one awful time!”

Clif laughed. “I like the way you talk, Parks,” he answered. “However, you needn’t worry. They’ll have you speaking like all the rest of us in a month. Which, to my thinking, will be a shame.”

“Yeah? Well, I don’t know. Ma’s strong for having me talk proper, like eastern folks. That’s why I come here. So―― Say, I said ‘come’ instead of ‘came’ again, didn’t I? Shucks, I’ve got a memory about as long as a piece of wire! Well, let’s see. Where was I?”

“You said your father had to give in finally.”

“Oh, yes! That’s sure right. There wasn’t any sense trying to live there and fight off oil fellows every minute, so pop gave in. He sold half the ranch. They wanted it all, but he wouldn’t do it. Ma’s got a sister living in New York state, place called Albia, and she wanted us to come east and spend the summer. Said we could go back home in the fall and pop could look around for another ranch. Pop said he’d be switched if he’d do anything of the sort.”

The narrator arose, walked to the door and turned the light switch. “Guess all this is sort of tiresome, Bingham. So long since I got a chance to do any talking I don’t know when to quit.”

“It isn’t tiresome a bit,” protested Clif. “I want to hear it. But doesn’t Walt talk? He used to.”

“Yeah, he talks.” Parks grinned. “I said _me_.”

“Oh,” Clif laughed. “You mean Walt wants to do all of it.”

“Well, I don’t know as I ought to say that exactly. I guess what I mean is that we don’t like to talk about the same things. He’s a pretty nice fellow, though, ain’t he? Well, as I was telling, we hopped a train long in June――”

“But you weren’t! You said your father refused to leave.”

“Yeah,” agreed Parks dryly; “but ma didn’t. Ma generally gets her way. So we come――gosh ding it, _came!_――east in June and visited Aunt Lida. Pop was so blame homesick, though, you’d pity him, and it wasn’t long before he went off to New York City and got him a job. Course he didn’t need it, because――” Parks hesitated and shot a doubtful glance at his audience――“well, you see, with them wells shooting their heads off and pop getting so much on every barrel, it wasn’t necessary he should.”

“In other words,” said Clif, smiling at the other’s embarrassment, “you’re disgustingly wealthy now!”

Parks grinned apologetically. “That’s about it,” he acknowledged. “Got more money than we know what to do with. Kind of a shame, too, for we don’t need it. Pop gets right worried at times, it piles up on him so. Said the other day he wished the tarnation wells would give out. But they ain’t doing it. They’re getting worse! Ma, she seems to like being rich. Says she don’t care if she never sees Wyoming again, but I guess that’s just talk. Still, at that, a woman has a pretty dull time of it on a ranch, and works pretty hard, too. Maybe she’s got a good right to like living in a New York hotel for a while.”

“You said your father got a job, Parks. What sort of a job was it?”

“Well, he found a man had a harness store over on the east side――or maybe west side――no, east side’s right――and he got a job with him. Then, long in August, he bought the man out. Fellow was glad enough to sell, I guess, for the harness business in New York’s about as dead as the ice business in Greenland. Pop got stung, I guess, and he’s sort of sore about it, too. Don’t hardly make his rent, and that’s worrying him like anything.”

“But if he has so much money already――”

“Yeah, but pop don’t like the idea of taking hold of a thing and not making it pay, you see. That’s what’s eating him. Shucks, seems like he’s done more worrying since we left Wyoming than he ever did before, long’s I’ve known him!”

“How long is that?” asked Clif.

“Eighteen years. Kind of old to be in the second class here, ain’t I? I told ma I was, too, but she wouldn’t listen. She’s dead set on having me gentled. Some lady she met at the hotel told her about this school and nothing would do but for me to come here. And here I am, a regular longhorn!”

“Oh, you’ll like it after you’ve been here a while,” Clif assured him. “It’s a corking good school.”

“Guess I like it all right now,” replied Parks reflectively. “Question is, does it like me? I ain’t properly broke to harness, Bingham, I guess. Fellows here are sort of――sort of――now what’s the word I’m after?――sort of clannish, aren’t they?”

“Mm, well, yes, I dare say, Parks. I suppose they are at all schools. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t join the clan. Fact is, old man, you’re just about the sort that goes big with us effete easterners. We get kind of tired of our own sort, you see.”

“Yeah? Well, I don’t know. Maybe I can horn into the herd after a spell. I’m sure obliged to you for letting me talk to you, Bingham. I was getting scared my tongue would get stiff in the joints from lack of exercise. Say, I don’t know what’s keeping Walt. He went out more’n an hour ago.”

“Never mind,” replied Clif, rising. “Just say I was here and that I’ll be back this evening some time. I haven’t had a talk with him since I got back.”

“You and him was together here last year, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

The big fellow sighed. “Guess you were more his style. Well, I’ll tell him you were asking for him.”

“Thanks.” Clif lingered, his hand on the knob. Then: “By the way, Parks,” he announced, “my roommate and I are having a little shindig next Friday evening. Tom――Tom Kemble――calls it a housewarming. I came to ask Walt to come to it. He may not want to, but, whether he does or doesn’t, I wish you’d come, Parks.”

“Me?” Parks looked startled. “Shucks, you don’t want me to your party, Bingham! I――I wouldn’t know what to say!”

“Oh, it isn’t a party at all. Just half a dozen――well, eight or nine fellows, you know, and something to eat. About nine o’clock, or as soon as you get through study. We’re going to get permits to run the show until ten-thirty. Don’t forget, now!”

“Well, I don’t know,” drawled Parks, shifting his weight to the other foot beside the table. “Maybe if Walt goes, though――”

“Righto! I’m counting on you.”

Outside in the corridor Clif had a moment of regret. After all, Parks didn’t know any of the others, save Walt, and perhaps he had been silly to ask him. However, it was done.