And again, in Indian falsetto, ringing with triumph, vernal and
bursting, slapping his thighs and stamping his feet to the accent,
Dick sang:

"The acorns come down from heaven!
I plant the short acorns in the valley!
I plant the long acorns in the valley!
I sprout, I, the black-oak acorn, sprout, I sprout!"

Dick Forrest's name began to appear in the newspapers with appalling
frequency. He leaped to instant fame by being the first man in
California who paid ten thousand dollars for a single bull. His
livestock specialist, whom he had filched from the Federal Government,
in England outbid the Rothschilds' Shire farm for Hillcrest Chieftain,
quickly to be known as Forrest's Folly, paying for that kingly animal
no less than five thousand guineas.

"Let them laugh," Dick told his ex-guardians. "I am importing forty
Shire mares. I'll write off half his price the first twelvemonth. He
will be the sire and grandsire of many sons and grandsons for which
the Californians will fall over themselves to buy of me at from three
to five thousand dollars a clatter."

Dick Forrest was guilty of many similar follies in those first months
of his majority. But the most unthinkable folly of all was, after he
had sunk millions into his original folly, that he turned it over to
his experts personally to develop along the general broad lines laid
down by him, placed checks upon them that they might not go
catastrophically wrong, bought a ticket in a passenger brig to Tahiti,
and went away to run wild.