“You’ve which?” said Hinman. “What building?”
“Pirie’s place; down in the next block,” Carver informed. “It’s got a grocery business on the ground floor and the grocer’s wife rents room upstairs.”
He extended a contract and Hinman perused it, observing that Carver had agreed to purchase at three thousand dollars, paying six hundred down and a like amount each year.
“I’d rented my little shack,” Carver explained. “Only to find that there wasn’t a room for rent in town; not one! It was either buy a place of my own or set up.”
“It’ll save you considerable room rent,” Hinman agreed, “you being in town easy three nights out of the year. But what’s the final object?”
“Each season those calves will be worth more and I can borrow enough additional against them to meet the payments,” Carver pointed out. “Meantime the grocer pays me thirty dollars rent money every month, which gives me a steady income to live off till such time as I can turn the building at a profit and buy a tract of land to run those calves on.”
“I didn’t know your ambitions run toward owning land,” said Hinman.
“But now since I’ve come into so much surplus fence wire,” Carver explained, “it looks like the only economical thing to do is to acquire a piece of land to set inside it.”
“Son, you’ve mapped out a self-operating business,” Nate Younger congratulated. “All you have to do now is to stand back and watch it ripen. Meantime why don’t you read up on Belgian hares?”
He handed over the sum due for back wages and Carver studied the two checks reflectively.