Chapter 2
Patrick Shaw’s Problem

After I got back from my adventure in Sonora six weeks earlier, I was certainly surprised by Almeda’s unexpected news.

I had just filed my story on the Fremont-Buchanan race with Mr. Kemble at the Alta. After that and Derrick Gregory and the double-dealings of that ne’er-do-well Robin O’Flaridy, I sometimes wonder if anything could surprise me! But I’ll have to say I was sure excited when I got home and Almeda said, “You’ll never believe it, Corrie, but your father and I are going to have a baby!” An adventure, a baby, and two elections were almost more than I could handle!

Three or four days after I returned from Sonora, we got the first inkling that Franklin Royce, the town banker, was up to his old mischief. One afternoon Patrick Shaw rode up to the house. One look at his face, and you could tell right off that he was in some kind of trouble.

Neither Pa or Almeda had to say anything to get him talking, or ask what the trouble was. It was out of his mouth the instant he lit off his horse.

“He’s gonna run us off our place, Drum!” he said. “But me and Chloe and the kids, we ain’t got no place else to go. What am I gonna do, Drum? I don’t know nothing but ranching, and with a family and the gold drying up everywhere, I can’t pack up and try to find some new claim!”

“Hold on, Pat,” said Pa. “What in tarnation are you talking about?”

“He’s fixing to run us out, just like I told ya!”

“Who?”

“Who else—Royce! There it is—look for yerself!”

He thrust a piece of paper he’d been holding in Pa’s direction. Pa took it and scanned it over quickly. He then handed it to Almeda.

“He says we got thirty days to get out!” Mr. Shaw’s face went red, then white. If he hadn’t been a man, he probably would have started crying.

Almeda read the paper over, taking longer than Pa, her forehead crinkling in a frown.

“It might as well be an eviction notice,” she said finally, looking up at the two men. “And if I know Franklin, it’s no doubt iron-clad and completely legal.”

“What happened, Pat?” Pa asked. “How’d you get into this fix?”

“Well, it ain’t no secret my claim’s just about played out. I wasn’t lucky enough to have any of your vein run across to my side of the hill. Though I suspect Royce thought it did, the way he’s been after my place.”

“What do you mean?” asked Almeda.

“Why, he’s come out offering to buy the place three or four times the last couple of years.”

“And so now he figures he’ll get your place without paying a cent for it!” said Pa, the heat rising in his voice.

“A few of my cattle got that blamed infection last spring when my pond had the dead skunk in it. It spread around the herd, and I wound up losing thirty or forty head. I missed a good sale I was gonna make, and so couldn’t make a few payments to the bank.”

“How many?”

“Four.”

“So how much you do owe him—how far behind are you now?”

“I pay him a hundred sixty-seven a month.”

“So you’re—let’s see . . . what, about six, seven hundred behind,” said Pa, scratching his head. “I’ll help you with it, Pat. I can loan you that much.”

“No good, Drum! I already thought of that. I knew you’d help if you could, so when Royce delivered me that there paper, I said to him, ‘I’ll get you the six sixty-eight—that’s how much he said I was in arrears, is what he called it. I told him I’d get it to him in a few days, because I knew you’d help me if you could. But he said it wouldn’t help. He said now that I defaulted, the whole loan was due immediately, and that if I didn’t come up with the whole thing in thirty days, the claim and the house and the whole two hundred-fifty acres and what cattle I got left—he said it’d all be his.”

“How much is your loan, Mr. Shaw?” Almeda asked. “What do you still owe the bank?”

“Seventeen thousand something.”

Pa let out a sigh and a low whistle. “Well, that’s a bundle all right, Pat,” he said. “I’m afraid there ain’t much I can do to help with that. Nick and I couldn’t scrape together more than three or four thousand between us.”

“What about me, Drummond Hollister?” said Almeda, pretending to get in a huff. “I’m part of this family now too, you know! Or had you forgotten?”

“I ain’t likely to do that anytime soon,” replied Pa smiling.

“Well then, I insist on being part of this. Parrish Mine and Freight could add, perhaps, two or three thousand.”

“I appreciate what you’re trying to do,” said Mr. Shaw, his voice forlorn. “But I could never let you loan me that kind of money, everything you got in the bank. It don’t matter anyhow. Between all of us, we ain’t even got half of what it’d take!”

“Yes, you’re right,” sighed Almeda. “And it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if your loan had a thirty-day call on it even if you weren’t behind in your payments. Franklin as much as told me that’s how he structured all the loans around here. Of course, I couldn’t say for certain without seeing the loan document, but my hunch is that your getting behind is only an excuse for the foreclosure, that legally he is perfectly justified in calling your note due at any time and giving you no more than thirty days notice.”

A little more talk followed. But there wasn’t much more to be said. Mr. Royce had the Shaws in a pickle, and nobody could see anything they could do about it.