Page:Steadfast Heart.djvu/252

 HEN workmen were imported and drilling operations actually began on one of the farms bought by Judge Crane, Rainbow became as nearly hysterical as it is possible for a solid, unemotional middle-western village to be. Men who had sold their farms walked up and down the land bewailing their luck; the post office talked of nothing else; the entire community poised on its toes, as it were, waiting for oil to flow—and in the interim, folks took to regarding Crane as a great man and a financial genius! They had always seen it in him. From childhood he had carried marks of future greatness. All this created an atmosphere exceedingly pleasing to Crane. He basked in the sunlight of public adulation; verged on pomposity; dressed himself in the airs of a busy capitalist. Visions of wealth exhibited themselves before his eyes—of a wealth which should be his alone—all his. Not one foot of ground, not one share in his enterprise would he part with. It was his idea to demonstrate oil and then sell to the Standard.