“Just looking the country over?”
“You might call it that.”
“Go slow,” admonished his companion. “Don’t let yourself be carried away. It is a wonderful country. But go slow. It’s the ones who expect to make millions the first year that become the worst knockers. Go slow, I always tell them. Go slow.”
“It’s not a good time to buy then?”
“Not so good as it was ten years ago! But land is cheaper than it was a year back. In some districts you can buy a good farm for a ticket back home, the farmers are so discouraged. Cold feet.” The slang sounded oddly, somehow. The man’s voice had the cultivated precision of the purist. “Cold feet. The river’s chilled them. The valley’s losing faith in the company.”
“What company?” inquired Rickard again.
“There’s but one company to the valley, the one that brought them here, the D. R. They don’t call the railroad The Company. They have nothing to do with that problem. They won’t recognize that problem! It’s had hard luck from the first, the D. R. At the very start, the wrong man got hold of it. Sather, the first promoter, was a faker; a pretty thorough faker. The company reorganized, but it’s been in bad odor with the public ever since.”
Rickard’s eyes left the deep cuts in the land made by the ravaging waters, and looked at his companion.
“I thought Estrada was the original promoter?” he inquired.
“Estrada’s a recent comer—oh, you mean the general. He started the ball rolling; that was all. Bad health, following the Bliss complication, tied his hands. Did you ever hear the story of the way he colonized his grant?”