story of a victorious achievement. Sorenson filed claims to all the remaining lands, however, and limped back to Portland, where he imparted the sad news to Mays, who as usual, blamed him for all his misfortunes.
It may be stated in this connection that while Sorenson attended to these details for Mays, and was indicted jointly with the latter and Jones for his connection with the scheme, it is believed that as a matter of fact, he did not profit to the extent of a dollar by the operation. his services in this regard being considerably upon the "Happy Hooligan" order. At all events, Sorenson has never been sentenced, and it is thought that the Government's knowledge of the situation may have had something to do with this exemption.
Mays was furious when he learned about the interference of McKinley and Tarpley, whom he regarded as interlopers, and immediately summoned Tarpley into his august presence. After assuring the young man that he had committed the most unpardonable offense of "butting in" on one of his choicest and most delicate morsels of plunder, he warned Tarpley that unless himself and McKinley yielded up one-half of all the land they had located, he would have their school sections "checkerboarded" when it came to a show-down—that is, omitted from the reserve pretty much after the fashion pursued by the Government in connection with the Santa Fe Railway Company's lands in the San Francisco Mountain Forest Reserve in Arizona, by having only the even numbered sections in the reserve embraced therein, and excluding the odd sections owned by the railroad corporation.
The bluff worked to a certain extent upon McKinley and Tarpley. as it appears they held a consultation upon the subject, and wound up by offering Mays 50 cents an acre upon all the lands they had fished from him, aggregating an amount equivalent to about $8,500.
"Fifty cents, indeed!" fairly stormed Mays. "Why, that wouldn't pay for the two fellows we have in Washington!' McKinley and Tarpley thereupon made a careful study of their map. and upon ascertaining that it would be impossible for Mays to checkerboard their holdings without impairing his own, advised him to seek a locality famed for the tropical character of its temperature.
As McKinley had to borrow all the money with which to purchase the lands from the State, he was obliged to sell them almost as soon as the certificates were issued by the Land Board. It proved to be a fortunate thing for him in this respect, as he received $2.50 an acre for lands that cost him $1.25. and had the satisfaction of knowing that himself and Tarpley were the only ones that profited to any great extent on the deal, as only a temporary withdrawal of the territory embraced in the proposed reserve was made at first, and pending this condition the Act of June 4, 1897, was repealed, so that when the reserve was finally established, the opportunity had passed for using the school sections as basis of .selection for other lands.
Those to whom McKinley sold purchased with their eyes open, as they were well aware that they were taking chances on the reserve being rejected, thus rendering their holdings of no value for lieu. Neither did the tracts possess any intrinsic value, as they were the "culls" of various townships in the proposed reserve, and so absolutely worthless, in fact, that they had never been applied for before. Had there been no repeal of the Act of June 4, however, they would have become available for making forest reserve lieu selections, and commanded a ready sale at from $5 to $7 an acre, as one kind of land would have been as good as any other under such conditions, the Act in question providing that the owner of any tract of patented land in a forest reserve had the option of exchanging his holdings for any unappropriated surveyed Government land on the outside.
Fred A. Kribs was a heavy loser by the operation, as he invested extensively in the tracts controlled by McKinley and Tarpley under the supposition that they were hard up, and that he was obtaining a gilt-edged bargain by squeezing them a little bit.Page 352
