“Well, I found I couldn’t do it––that is, if I wanted to keep anything for myself. I want you to come in, and as soon as I hear you’re ready to give it your attention, I’ll lay a proposition before you.”
He sat looking at them, in a state of tense anxiety, until one of them rose to his feet.
“I guess you can count upon every one of us,” he announced.
A reassuring murmur ran along the double row of men, and Nasmyth felt a thrill of exultation.
“Thank you, boys,” he said with evident gratitude. “Now, there are difficulties to be grappled with. To begin with, the Crown authorities would sooner have leased the valley to me, and it was some time before they decided that as a special concession they would sell it in six hundred and forty acre lots at the lowest figure for first-class lands. The lots are to be laid off in rectangular blocks, and as the valley is narrow and winding, that takes in a proportion of heavy timber on the hill bench, and will not include quite a strip of natural prairie, which remains with the Crown. The cost of the land alone runs close on twenty thousand dollars, of which, one way or another, I can raise about eight thousand.”
He looked at Wheeler, who sat near the lower end of the table, and he nodded.
“My offer stands,” he said.
“You want another twelve thousand dollars,” said the hotel-keeper dubiously. “It’s quite a pile of money.”
There was a little laughter from the men. “Well,” said one of them, “I guess we can raise it somehow among us, but it’s going to be a pull.”