“I know it day an’ night, through an’ through. I know every coal seam in them hills. I know most every old-time poplar tree an’ big white oak from Hell-fer-Sartin to the mouth of Rattlesnake, an’ from Big Creek to the Main Forks. I don’t know nothin’ else.”
“Now then—now then—now then,” resumed Haddon excitedly—“that’s the answer! That certainly is the answer to the whole thing. Now, you come back with us—I’ll get you some clothes, and that sort of thing, of course. I’ll pay your railroad fare and expenses, and ten dollars a day, and I’ll keep you in New York until this business is over. In return for that, all I want you to do is to tell my men what you know about that country—how many trees there are to an acre on that Hell-fer-Sartin tract—where the oil croppings are, so far as you know—where the railroad’s got to come. Can you show it on a map?”
“I don’t know about maps, stranger,” said David Joslin, “but if ye could tell me the names of the places on the maps, like rivers, ye know—ye see, I kain’t read very well, not yit.”
“Sure, sure, I’ll fix that all right I’ll show it for you just like a book. A child could read it.”
“I kain’t read no better’n a child, Mr. Haddon, but if ye kin show me whar the creeks is marked on the map I kin show ye whar the railroad has got to go. I kin put my finger on every place whar oil has been found, er gas—ye know, thar’s places whar gas has been burnin’ fer forty year, ever sence the War, an’ thar didn’t nobody know about it.”
“There doesn’t anyone know that there’s a continuance of the big West Virginia anticline right through these mountains,” rejoined Haddon grimly. “Oil?—There’s got to be oil in here, and I know it. Our geologists figured that all out before you ever told me there had been oil found in here. Why, man—I can’t afford _not_ to take you back with me. And you can’t afford not to come.”
“What do ye think of this, Ma’am?” said David Joslin, turning toward the quiet young woman. “I reckon ye mought be ashamed of me if I went along with ye.” He flushed dully.
“No, Mr. Joslin,” said she, quickly. “You’ll learn. You wouldn’t be unhappy, I think. I want you to feel that we want to help you. Let my husband take care of the business part. I’ll see what I can do toward getting you a chance to study. If money is good for anything, Jim, it ought to be good for just some such thing as this.”