“Oh, articles about different things.”
“You don’t know much about mining, huh?”
“Not a damn thing.”
“How’d you happen to pick this to write about?”
“I thought it would go over swell — not in a mining journal, but in an agricultural journal.”
He looked at me for a while without saying anything, then he tamped the tobacco down into his pipe, and relaxed to the comfort of smoking.
After a while I told him I’d be on my way, that I’d come back later on perhaps and get some more information. I told him I’d pay him five dollars an evening. He said that was fair enough, and shook hands. “Any time you want to come back and visit,” he said, “it ain’t goin’ to cost you no five bucks. I like you. You fit in. It ain’t everybody I let sit down and visit. And it ain’t one person in a hundred that ever gets to sample any of this stuff.” He jerked his head in the direction of the glass on the table.
“I can understand that,” I said. “Well, so-long.”
“So-long.”
I drove back to the auto court. A big shiny sport coupé was parked in front of the cabin I’d rented. I took my key out of my pocket and opened the door. I heard the sound of motion in an adjoining cabin, and closed my door quickly. Then I heard feet on the graveled walk, light steps on the porch, and a knock on my door.