Pete chuckled. It was a dry chuckle that was packed with philosophic amusement. “Helluva bunch,” he admitted.
I looked around the cabin. “This is a mighty cosy little place.”
“Suits me all right.”
“How did it happen the dredgers didn’t chew it up?”
“They had to leave it to keep the river out of the ground they were working. They intended to swing around and build a levee with tailings so they could come back to it later on. It didn’t work out that way.”
“How big a strip is it?”
“Oh, maybe half a mile long by a couple of hundred yards wide.”
“It’s nice-looking country. Was it all like this before the dredgers came?”
“Nope. This was wasteland. It had been worked by hand. The old tailing piles left by the Chinks are still here. They weren’t big piles, just four or five feet — there was some pretty good land here before the dredgers started farther up the valley.”
“This strip looks nice to me.”