Acton looked hard at Hutton, who smiled again. “Oh, yes,” replied Hutton, “I understand that. It’s quite likely we’ll have the thing fixed up in half an hour or so. A cigar, Mr. Nasmyth?”
Nasmyth took a cigar, and went with Hutton to the little table which had been set out, on the inner side of the veranda, with a carafe of ice-water and a couple of bottles. They sat down at it, and Hutton took out two letters and glanced at them.
“Now,” he said, “we’ll get to work. I understand your proposition is to run the water out of the Cedar Valley. What’s the area?”
“About four thousand acres available for ranching land, though it has never been surveyed.”
“And you want to take up as many acres beforehand as you can, and can’t quite raise the capital?”
Nasmyth said that was very much the state of affairs, and Hutton drummed his fingers on the table. He was a lean-faced man, dressed quietly and precisely, in city fashion, but he wore a big stone in a ring on one hand, which for no very evident reason prejudiced his companion against him.
“Well,” he averred, “we might consider going into 170 the thing and finding part of the capital. It’s our business, but naturally we would want to be remunerated for the risk. It’s rather a big one. You see, you would have to take up the whole four thousand acres.”
“Then,” replied Nasmyth, “what’s your proposition?”
“We’ll put up what money you can’t raise, and our surveyor will locate land at present first-class Crown land figure. We’ll charge you bank rate until the land’s made marketable when you have run the water out. In a general way, that’s my idea of the thing.”
Nasmyth laid down his cigar and looked at him. “Isn’t it a little exorbitant? You get the land at cost value, and a heavy charge on that, while I do the work?”