"I fancy my motive was not an unusual one. To pick up a few dollars."
"Got them yet?"
"I can't say I have."
The stranger appeared reflective. "There are not many folks who would have admitted that," he said. "When a man has been four years in this country he ought to have put a few dollars together. What have you been at?"
"Ranching most of the time. Road-making, saw-milling, and a few other occupations of the same kind afterwards."
"What was wrong with the ranch?"
Persistent questioning is not unusual in that country, for what is considered delicacy depends largely upon locality, and Brooke laughed.
"Almost everything," he said. "It had a good many disadvantages besides its rockiness, sterility, and an unusually abundant growth of two-hundred-feet trees. Still, it was the man who sold it me I found most fault with. He was a land agent."
"One of the little men?"
"No. I believe he is considered rather a big one—in fact about the biggest in that particular line."