The Transgressors Read Online Free PDF

give you, and—Here: I’ll put it in your chest for you, right under your Tarzan books.”
    “What is it, Mama? Where you goin’?”
    “Never mind. You’ll understand when you’re older. Just take good care of it, and don’t tell a soul about it.”
    “I can tell Papa, can’t I?”
    “No! He’d just laugh—call it a lot of nonsense. Anything I do or say, he’d…You mustn’t tell him, anyway. You’ll understand that later, too.”
    “Mama, where you—?”
    “You go back to sleep now. Hurry like a good boy, and I’ll stay here with you.”
    And, he, brightening. “Yes’um. G’night, Mama.”
    And she, very softly, her voice blurring into this slumber, “Good-bye, my darling…”
     
    It was all still where she had put it, the thin parchment package wrapped in endless layers of rotting silk.
    Tom exhumed it, and took it to a lawyer. Then, feeling pretty silly about the whole thing, telling himself that of course there was nothing to it, he sat back to await the verdict.
    The lawyer was in his dotage, and he had never been much good to begin with. There had been no practice here to make him so, and being one of the people, as Tom was, he could exist comfortably in mediocrity.
    His attitude, as he began to read the parchment, was anything but encouraging.
    Another one of these things, huh? Yeah, he’d seen plenty of ’em in his time; used to be about as common as buried-treasure maps. See some Mex sheepherder, and you could just about bet beans to biscuits that he had one of the things in his bindle.
    He frowned suddenly, squinted. He took off his glasses and polished them, then bent so close to the document that his beak nose brushed against it.
    “Well, I’ll be danged,” he breathed. “Yes, sir, I will be danged!”
    “Yes, sir?” Tom prompted.
    “Hesh up, can’t you? You’re in such an all-fired hurry you c’n go somewheres else.”
    “Yes, sir,” said Tom meekly.
    The lawyer fingered the parchment with almost loving delicacy. Taking a large magnifying glass from his desk, he scanned its faded, spidery lettering.
    At last he leaned back in his chair and shook his head wonderingly.
    “You got yourself somethin’ there, son. Looks like you’re about the biggest landowner in the county.”
    “Honest?” Tom’s face cracked into a grin. “You really mean it?”
    “Somethin’ wrong with your ears? I said so, didn’t I?” The lawyer eyed him sternly before continuing. “ ’Course it’s the worst land in the county, which makes it just about the most no-account in the world. Grasshopper couldn’t cross it unless he carried his lunch with him. But the mineral rights, now—if the oil boom should swing your way…”
    “Holy God,” Tom murmured reverently. “Hot jumpin’ Hannah! I—You’re sure about it, sir? I’m not doubting your word, but—”
    “Sounds t’me like you are! Sounds like you think I don’t know my business. Prob’ly make yourself a million dollars an’ give me the go-by for some young smart-aleck lawyer.”
    “Now, I wouldn’t do that, sir,” Tom said quietly. “Any business I have, you can handle it for me. And I’d be right hurt if you didn’t take it.”
    The lawyer was mollified, even moved to a senile tear or two. He assured Tom that he would have plen-ty of business— if there was oil on his holdings.
    “This here’s a Royal Spanish Land Grant, son. Highest courts in the country have upheld ’em. That land’s yours just as if old Ferdinand and Isabella had give it to you theirselves. Which,” he cackled shrilly, pointing to the signatures on the parchment, “is just what they went and done!”
    In due time, the oil boom crept into Pardee County. The oil fields swung toward Tom Lord’s land. Not all of it, but large sections of it; enough to assure him that his fortune was made, and that his only concern need be the amount of it.
    An uninterrupted procession of lease hounds, scouts, executives, and independent entrepreneurs called on