"You haven't a chance," he said. "I'll be quite frank with you. We have the best legal advice, and our position is quite unassailable. Even if it were not, we could appeal you into bankruptcy. Still, though I don't admit that you have the least claim on us, we might possibly buy in your holdings at a fair present price."
"That's freeze-out," Dunne returned bluntly. "You force us to sell, and afterward you include our lands in your ditch system, and clean up a thousand per cent. It won't do. We proved that country, and we want that profit ourselves."
"I'm making the offer to you alone," said York. "I don't care about the others. We don't want their land."
"Then why are you trying to make a deal with me?" rasped Casey Dunne. "You think I'll go home and tell my neighbours that they have no show at all to buck the railway, and the best thing we all can do is to sell out for what we can get—and then I keep my mouth shut on the fact that I'm getting more than the rest of them."
"Nothing of the sort," snapped York, who did not like to hear his thought done into plain English. "My offer was made in good faith, but I withdraw it. Keep your land."
"And the devil do me good with it, I suppose!" said Casey Dunne, picking up his hat and rising. "Very well, Mr. York. I know now where you stand. And here's where we stand: Not one of us will sell an acre or a foot. We are going to keep our land, and we are going to keep our water—somehow."
"The best advice I can give you is to see a good lawyer," said York.
"I'll take the advice," Dunne replied. "But whether we take the lawyer's advice or not is another matter entirely."
"What do you mean by that?" York demanded.
"I mean," said Dunne, who had quite recovered his usual manner, which contained a spice of mockery that York found irritating, "that we're not very strong on law down where I come from. Some of us have got along pretty well with what law we carried around with us. Good morning, Mr. York."