Page:Looters of the Public Domain.djvu/309



unless fair treatment was accorded me in the matter, that I would have the entire thirty-three entries cancelled. Kribs advised me not to proceed to Washington without seeing Smith first, stating that he would write him immediately to settle with me. As F. Pierce Mays was on the same train with me bound for Washington City, I accompanied him as far as Minneapolis. While enroute, I explained the Smith deal to Mays, stating that it was my intention to stop off at Minneapolis and endeavor to settle with Smith, and suggested to Mays that it would be a good idea for him to see Commissioner Hermann as soon as he arrived in Washington, and prevail upon the latter to suspend the issuance of patents to these lands until such time as I made a settlement with Smith. Mays promised to see the Commissioner immediately upon arrival in Washington, and have Mr. Hermann hold up the patents until Mays could hear from me.

Evidently, Kribs must have wired Smith to keep out of my way in Minneapolis until he would receive a letter, acquainting him with the facts. Smith managed to evade me until the evening following my arrival in Minneapolis, and might have kept out of my sight still longer had I not called upon him at his residence, where I made an appointment to meet him the next morning at his office. Here I found him willing to settle with me but upon a basis that would have left me without a penny for my work. We held quite a heated discussion on the subject. Smith insisting on maintaining a position that made me feel as if I were under deep obligations to him for retaining any portion of my scalp at all. He would not, for a moment, take into consideration the admitted fact that he had made a most excellent investment through me in connection with the Humboldt county lands, but like Shylock, insisted upon his pound of flesh.

It was not what he had already made through me that was worrying him; it was what he expected to gain, and this reflection was liable at any moment to Page 303