“How much would you figure the best of the bottom land in the Strip will bring when it’s proved up?” he asked.
“Not much over eight or ten dollars at the first, maybe twelve an acre for the best of it,” Hinman estimated.
“But if I live a long life I’ll see every foot of it touch fifty,” said Carver. “Don’t you think?”
“And if you live a while longer than that you’ll see it top a hundred,” Hinman stated. “It’ll take some time but it will get there. I’ve seen it repeated before now as a country settles up.”
“I’ve made my last bet on tumbleweeds,” said Carver. “And I’d as soon start my pumpkin patch down there as anywheres. It would be right nice to have something over a thousand acres of good land down on Cabin Creek, the old site of the Half Diamond H.”
“It would,” said Younger. “Only it can’t be done. A man can only file on a quarter section and he has to live there to prove up. Even if you could buy his relinquishment you couldn’t live on but one place at once.”
“Last year when I went up to Kansas City in charge of a train-load of your steers a banker showed me a collection of scrip he’d made,” said Carver. “It was Civil War Scrip, issued to veterans in lieu of pensions, or maybe on top of pensions, I don’t know which. Anyway, it entitles the holder to lay that paper on any tract of government land and get a patent to it without having to live there and prove up. A number used it on small plots left open round where they lived and sold off the fractions left over for whatever they could get. On and off in the last ten years this banker has accumulated such fractions to the amount of seventeen hundred acres. He intimated that he’d let them go for the price of the raw land. If he’ll sell for three dollars an acre he’s found a customer.”
“But the Strip won’t be opened for entry till a certain hour,” Hinman objected. “And right then there’ll be three men for every claim turned loose across the line at once.”
“There’s thousands making the run that don’t consider proving up,” said Carver. “They’ll relinquish for whatever they can get. I can furnish them with scrip to get their patent and they can deed it right back to me.”
Carver returned a week later, owner of scrip to the extent of nearly two thousand acres. As he stepped from the train he noted Bart and Noll Lassiter conversing, Bart grinning as usual while Noll’s face expressed black wrath.