Goldstone was woke up, all right, all right. She was as lively and excited as a chicken with its haid cut off. That real-estate feller ’d bought up two big tracts just north of town, gittin’ ’em cheap a-course; awful cheap, in fact, ’cause no one ’d smelt a boom when he first showed up. (Wal, first come, first served.) Porky ’d bought, too, and owned some lots ’twixt them tracts and the post-office. To the east, right where the nicest houses is, the parson was plannin’ to import his fambly. More’n that, them four gun-shy gents stood ready to buy all the time. And Goldstone fellers that would ’a’ swapped they lots fer a yalla dawg, and then shot the dawg, was holdin’ out fer fifty plunks.
Wal, I had that three hunderd. But I helt back. What I wanted to know was the why behind the boom.
I just kinda happened past that real-estate corn-crib. The land-agent was to home, and I ast him to come over and have one with me. He said O. K., that suited him. So we greased our hollers a few times. And, when he was feelin’ so good that he could make out to talk, I drawed from him that Goldstone was likely to stand ’way up yonder at the haid of her class account of “natu’al developments.”
“Natu’al developments,” I says. “Wal, pardner, when it comes to them big, dictionary words, I shore am a slouch. And you got me all twisted up in my picket-rope.”
But I had to spend another dollar ’fore he’d talk some more. Then he begun, turrible confidential: “I been sayin’ nothin’ and sawin’ wood, Lloyd. I ain’t let no man git information outen me. But I like you, Lloyd, and, say! I’m a-goin’ to tell you. Natu’al developments is coal and oil and gas.”
Same as the Tusla country! Wal, I was plumb crazy. “Blamed if it ain’t likely,” I says to myself. “Wal, that settles things fer me.”
I got shet of that real-estate feller quick as I could (didn’t want him to remember that he’d talked in his sleep), and hunted up the post-master. The postmaster was one of the china-eyed, corn-silk Swedes, and he owned quite a bit of Goldstone. I tole him I wanted to buy a couple of lots ’cause I was goin’ to be married, and figgered to build. (That wasn’t no lie, neither.) Said I didn’t want to live in the part of town where the greasers was fer the reason that I’d rather settle down in a Sioux Camp in August any day than amongst a crowd of blamed cholos.
The postmaster wasn’t anxious to sell. Said he didn’t have more’n a block left, and he wanted a big price fer that. “’Cause this boom is solid,”–he kinda half whispered it. “How do I know? Wal, I pumped one of them suspender-cityzens this mornin’.”
That showed me I’d got to hump myself. If that real-estate feller blabbed any more, I wouldn’t be able to buy. The station-agent owned some lots. I hiked fer the deepot.
When I looked into the ticket-office through the little winda, I seen that agent–one hand on the tick-machine, other holdin’ his haid–with his mouth wide open, like a hungry wall-eye.