The Money Tree Read online

'What are you going to do with the rollaT she asked.

  'We'll put him in the car and drive down and have a talk with Metcalfe. You stay out in the car with the rolla and if there is any funny stuff, you get out of there. Long as we have the rolla we got Metcalfe across the barrel.'

  'You're crazy if you think I'll stay alone, with that thing in the car. Not after what it done to you.'

  'Just get yourself a stick of stove wood and belt him one with it if he makes a crooked move.'

  Til do no such thing,' said Mabel. 'I will not stay with him.'

  'All right, then,' said Doyle, 'we'll put him in the trunk. We'll fix him up with some blankets, so he'll be comfortable. He can't get at you there. And it might be better to have him under lock and key.'

  Mabel shook her head. 'I hope that you are doing right, Chuck. I hope we don't get into trouble.'

  'Put that stuff away,' said Doyle, 'and let us get a move on. We got to get out of here before that jerk down the hall decides to phone the cops.'

  The rolla showed up in the doorway, patting at his belly.

  JERKS? he asked. WHATS THEM?

  'Oh, my aching back,' said Doyle, 'now I got to explain to him.'

  JERKS LIKE HEELS?

  'Sure, that's it,' said Doyle. 'A jerk is like a heel.'

  METCALFE SAY ALL OTHER HUMANS HEELS

  'Now, I tell you, Metcalfe might have something there,' said Doyle, judicially.

  HEEL MEAN HUMAN WITH NO MONEY

  Tve never heard it put quite that way,' said Doyle, 'but if that should be the case, you can count me as a heel.'

  METCALFE SAY THAT WHAT IS WRONG WITH PLANET. THERE IS TOO LITTLE MONEY

  'Now, that is something that I'll go along with him.'

  SO I NOT i

  ANGRY WITH YOU ANY MORE.

  Mabel said: 'My, but he's turned out to be a chatterbox.'

  MY JOB TO

  CARE AND

  GUARD TREE.

  I ANGRY AT

  THE START.

  BUT FINALLY

  I THINK

  POOR HEEL

  NEED SOME MONEY

  CANNOT BLAME

  FOR TAKING.

  That's decent of you,' Doyle told him. 'I wish you'd thought of that before you chewed me up. If I could have had just a full five minutes — '

  'I am ready,' Mabel said. 'If we have to leave, let's go.'

  III

  Doyle went softly up the walk that led to the front of the Metcalfe house. The place was dark and the moon was riding homeward in the western sky, just above the tip of a row of pines that grew in the grounds across the street.

  He mounted the steps of mellowed brick and stood before the door. He reached out and rang the bell and waited.

  Nothing happened.

  He rang again and yet again and there was no answer.

  He tried the door and it was locked.

  'They flown the coop,' said Doyle, talking to himself.

  He went around the house into the alley and climbed the tree again.

  The garden back of the house was dark and silent. He crouched for a long time atop the wall and the place was empty.

  He pulled a flashlight from his pocket and played it downward. It cut a circle of uncertain light and he moved it slowly back and forth until it caught the maw of tortured earth.

  His breath rasped in his throat at the sight of it and he worked the light around to make sure there was no mistake.

  There was no mistake at all. The money tree was gone. Someone had dug it up and taken it away.

  Doyle snapped off the light and slid it back into his pocket. He slid down the tree and trotted down the alley.

  Two blocks away he came up to the car. Mabel had kept the motor idling. She moved from behind the wheel and he slid under it and shoved the car in gear.

  They took it on the lam,' he said. There ain't nobody there. They dug up the tree and took it on the lam.'

  'Well, I'm glad of it,' Mabel said defiantly. 'Now you won't be getting into trouble — not with money trees at least.'

  'I got a hunch,' said Doyle.

  'So have I,' said Mabel. 'Both of us is going home and getting us some sleep.'

  'Maybe you,' said Doyle. 'You can curl up in the seat. Me, I got some driving to do.'

  There ain't no place to drive.'

  'Metcalfe told me when I was taking his picture this afternoon about a farm he had. Bragging about all the things he has, you know. Out west some place, near a town called Millville.'

  'What has that got to do with it?'

  'Well, if you had a lot of money trees…'

  'But he had only one tree. In the backyard of his house.'

  'Maybe he has lots of them. Maybe he had this one here just to keep him in pocket money when he was in town.'

  'You mean you're driving out to this place where he has a farm?'

  'I have to find an all-night station first. I need some gas and I need a road map to find out where is this Millville place. I bet you Metcalfe's got an orchard on that farm of his. Can't you see it, Mabel? Row after row of trees, all loaded down with money!'

  IV

  The old proprietor of the only store in Millville — part hardware, part grocery, part drugstore, with the post office in one corner — rubbed his silvery mustache.

  'Yeah,' he said. 'Man by the name of Metcalfe does have a farm — over in the hills across the river. He's got it named and everything. He calls it Merry Hill. Now, can you tell me, stranger, why anyone should name a farm like that?'

  'People do some funny things,' said Doyle. 'Can you tell me how to get there?'

  'You asked?'

  'Sure I asked. I asked you just now…'

  The old man shook his head. 'You been invited there? Metcalfe expecting you?'

  'No, I don't suppose he is.'

  'You'll never get in then. He's got it solid-fenced. And he's got a guard at the gate — even got a little house for the guard to stay in. 'Less Metcalfe wants you in, you don't get in.'

  Til have a try at it.'

  'I wish you well, stranger, but I don't think you'll make it. Now, why in the world should Metcalfe act like that? This is friendly country. No one else has got their farms fenced with eight-foot wire and barbs on top of that. No one else could afford to do it even if they wanted to. He must be powerful scared of someone.'

  'Wouldn't know,' said Doyle. 'Tell me how to get there.'

  The old man found a paper sack underneath the counter, fished a stub pencil out of his vest pocket and wet it carefully with his tongue. He smoothed out the sack with a liver-spotted hand and began drawing painfully.

  'You cross the bridge and take this road — don't take that one to the left, it just wanders up the river — and you go up this hollow and you reach a steep hill and at the top of it you turn left and it's just a mile to Metcalfe's place.'

  He wet the pencil again and drew a rough rectangle.

  'The place lies right in there,' he said. 'A sizeable piece of property. Metcalfe bought four farms and threw them all together.'

  Back at the car Mabel was waiting irritably.

  'So you was wrong all the time,' she greeted Doyle. 'He hasn't got a farm.'

  'Just a few miles from here,' said Doyle. 'How is the rolla doing?'

  'He must be hungry again. He's banging on the trunk.'

  'How can he be hungry? I bought him all of them bananas just a couple hours ago.'

  'Maybe he wants company. He might be getting lonesome.'

  T got too much to do,' said Doyle, 'to be holding any rolla's hand.'

  He climbed into the car and got it started and pulled away into the dusty street. He clattered across the bridge and instead of keeping up the hollow, as the storekeeper had directed, turned left on the road that paralleled the river.

  If the map the old man had drawn on the sack was right, he figured, he should come upon the Metcalfe farm from the rear by following the river road.

  Gentle hills turned into steep bluffs, covered with h
eavy woods and underbrush. The crooked road grew rougher. He came to a deep hollow that ran between two bluffs. A faint trail, a wagon-road more than likely, unused for many years, angled up the hollow.

  Doyle pulled the car into the old wagon road and stopped. He got out and stood for a moment, staring up the hollow.

  'What you stopping for?' asked Mabel.

  'I'm about,' Doyle told her, 'to take Metcalfe in the rear.'

  'You can't leave me here.'

  'I won't be gone for long.'

  'And there are mosquitoes,' she complained, slapping wildly.

  'Just keep the windows shut.'

  He started to walk away and she called him back.

  'There's the rolla back there.'

  'He can't get at you as long as he's in the trunk.'

  'But all that banging he's doing! What if someone should go past and hear all that banging going on?'

  'I bet you there ain't been anyone along this road within the last two weeks.'

  Mosquitoes buzzed. He waved futile hands at them.

  'Look, Mabel,' he pleaded, 'you want me to pull this off, don't you? You ain't got anything against a mink coat, have you? You don't despise no diamonds?'

  'No, I guess I don't,' she admitted. 'But you hurry back. I don't want to be here alone when it's getting dark.'

  He swung around and headed up the hollow.

  The place was green — the deep, dead green, the shabby, shapeless green of summer. And quiet — except for the buzzing of mosquitoes. And to Doyle's concrete-and-asphalt mind there was a bit of lurking terror in the green quietness of the wooded hills.

  He slapped at mosquitoes again and shrugged.

  'Ain't nothing to hurt a man,' he said.

  It was rough traveling. The hollow slanted, climbing up between the hills, and the dry creek bed, carpeted with tumbled boulders and bars of gravel, slashed erratically from one bluff-side to the other. Time after time, Doyle had to climb down one bank and climb up the other when the shifting stream bed blocked his way. He tried walking in the dry bed, but that was even worse — he had to dodge around or climb over a dozen boulders every hundred feet.

  The mosquitoes grew worse as he advanced. He took out his handkerchief and tied it around his neck. He pulled his hat down as far as it would go. He waged energetic war — he killed them by the hundreds, but there was no end to them.

  He tried to hurry, but it was no place to hurry. He was dripping wet with perspiration. He wanted to sit down and rest, for he was short of wind, but when he tried to sit the mosquitoes swarmed in upon him in hateful, mindless numbers and he had to move again.

  The ravine narrowed and twisted and the going became still rougher.

  He came around a bend and the way was blocked. A great mass of tangled wood and vines had become wedged between two great trees growing on opposite sides of the steep hillsides.

  There was no possibility of getting through the tangle. It stretched for thirty feet or more and was so thickly interlaced that it formed a solid wall, blocking the entire stream bed. It rose for twelve or fifteen feet and behind it rocks and mud and other rubble had been jammed hard against it by the boiling streams of water that had come gushing down the hollow in times of heavy rain.

  Clawing with his hands, digging with his feet, Doyle crawled up the hillside to get around one end of the obstruction.

  He reached the clump of trees against which one end of it rested and hauled himself among them, bracing himself with aching arms and legs. The mosquitoes came at him in howling squadrons and he broke off a small branch, heavy with leaves, from one of the trees, and used it as a switch to discourage them.

  He perched there, panting and sobbing, drawing deep breaths into his tongs. And wondered, momentarily, how he'd ever managed to get himself into such a situation. It was not his dish, he was not cut out for roughing it. His ideas of nature never had extended any further than a well-kept city park.

  And here he was, in the depths of nowhere, toiling up outlandish hills, heading for a place where there might be money trees — row on row of money trees.

  'I wouldn't do it,' he told himself, 'for nothing less than money.'

  He twisted around and examined the tangle of wood and vines and saw, with some astonishment, that it was two feet thick or more and that it carried its thickness uniformally. And the uphill side of it was smooth and slick, almost as if it had been planed and sanded, although there was not a tool mark on it.

  He examined it more closely and it was plain to see that it was no haphazard collection of driftwood that had been built up through the years, but that it was woven and interlaced so intricately that it was a single piece — had been a single piece even before it had become wedged between the trees.

  Who, he wondered, could have, or would have, done a job like that? Where would the patience have been mustered and the technique and the purpose? He shook his head in wonderment.

  He had heard somewhere about Indians weaving brush together to make weirs for catching fish, but there were no fish in this dry stream bed and no Indians for several hundred miles.

  He tried to figure out the pattern of the weaving and there was no pattern that he could detect. Everything was twisted and intergrown around everything else and the whole thing was one solid mass.

  Somewhat rested and with his wind at least partially restored, he proceeded on his way, trailing a ravaging cloud of mosquitoes in his wake.

  It seemed now that the trees were thinning and that he could see blue sky ahead. The terrain leveled out a bit and he tried to hurry, but racked leg muscles screamed at him and he contented himself with jogging along as best he could.

  He reached more level ground and finally broke free into a clearing that climbed gently to the top of a grassy knoll. Wind came out of the west, no longer held back by the trees, and the mosquitoes fell away, except for a small swarm of diehards that went part way up the knoll with him.

  He reached the top of the knoll and threw himself in the grass, lying flat, panting like a tuckered dog.

  And there, not more than a hundred yards away, was the fence that closed in Metcalfe's farm.

  It marched across the rolling, broken hills, a snake of shining metal. And extending out from it was a broad swath of weeds, waist-high, silver-green in the blasting sunlight — as if the ground had been plowed around the fence for a distance of a hundred feet or so and the weeds sown in the ground as one might sow a crop. Doyle squinted his eyes to try to make out what kind of weeds they were, but he was too far away.

  Far on the distant ridge was the red gleam of a rooftop among many sheltering trees and to the west of the buildings lay an orchard, ordered row on row.

  Was it, Doyle wondered, only his imagination that the shapes of those orchard trees were the remembered shape of the night-seen tree in the walled garden in the rear of Metcalfe's town-house? And was it once more only his imagination that the green of them was slightly different than the green of other leaves — the green, perhaps of mint-new currency?

  He lay in the grass, with the fingers of the wind picking at his sweat-soaked shirt, and wondered about the legal aspects of money that was grown on trees. It could not be counterfeit, for it was not made but grown. And if it were identical with perfectly legal, government-printed money, could anyone prove in any court of law that it was bogus money? He didn't know much law, but he wondered if there could be any statute upon the books that would cover a point of law like this? Probably not, he concluded, since it was so fantastic that it could not be anticipated and thus would require no rule to legislate against it.

  And now, for the first time, he began really to wonder how money could be grown on trees. He had told Mabel, off-handedly and casual, so she wouldn't argue, that a botanist could do anything. But that wasn't entirely right, of course, because a botanist only studied plants and learned what he could about them. But there were those other fellows — these bio-something or other — who fooled around with changing plants. They bred grasse
s that would grow on land that would grow no more than thistles, they cross-pollinated corn to grow more and bigger ears, they developed grains that were disease-resistant, and they did a lot of other things. But developing a tree that would grow letter-perfect money in lieu of leaves seemed just a bit far-fetched.

  The sun beat against his back and he felt the heat of it through his drying shirt. He looked at his watch and it was almost three o'clock.

  He turned his attention back to the orchard and this time he saw that many little figures moved among the trees. He strained his eyes to see them better, but he could not be sure — although they looked for all the world like a gang of ralias.

  He crawled down the knoll and across the strip of grass toward the weeds. He kept low and inched along and was very careful. His only hope of making a deal, any kind of deal, with Metcalfe, was to come upon him unawares and let him know immediately what kind of hand he held.

  He started worrying about how Mabel might be getting along, but he wiped the worry out. He had enough to worry about without adding to it. And, anyhow, Mabel was quite a gal and could take care of herself.

  He began running through his mind alternate courses of action if he should fail to locate Metcalfe, and the most obvious, of course, was to attempt a raid upon the orchard. As he thought it over, he wasn't even sure but what a raid upon the orchard might be the thing to do. He wished he'd brought along the sugar sack Mabel had fixed up for him.

  The fence worried him a little, but he also thrust that worry to one side. It would be time enough to worry about the fence once he got to it.

  He slithered through the grass and he was doing swell. He was almost to the strip of weeds and no one apparently had seen him. Once he got to the weeds, it would be easier, for they would give him cover. He could sneak right up to the fence and no one would ever notice.

  He reached the weeds and wilted at what he saw.

  The weeds were the healthiest and thickest patch of nettles that had ever grown outdoors!

  He put out a tentative hand and the nettles stung. They were the real McCoy. Ruefully, he rubbed at the dead-white welts rising on his fingers.

  He raised himself cautiously to peer above the nettles. One of the rollas was coming down the slope toward the fence and there was no doubt now that the things he'd seen up in the orchard was a gang of rollas.