“Can’t tell you.”
I was getting a little shaky on the proposition and raised the paper in front of my face and appeared to lose interest in matters of law. After a time the red-faced individual tapped on the paper with his knuckle, as one would tap on a door. I pulled my shield to one side.
“A chap hates to let go of a big thing to a stranger, even if that stranger is a lawyer. I have walked past a dozen law-offices without daring to go in. Perhaps you don’t realize what a big thing I’ve got. Now listen here! Suppose you were a fellow like I am—a prospector—and was digging around the record-books, looking up land titles, mineral grants, and so forth, and got on to a trail that you followed up and found that a new city had been laid out and lots sold off and buildings going up, and all that—all on a location that wasn’t legal? Mind you, I ain’t naming any place. But it’s on a section that land-grabbers got hold of a long time ago. And they were such hungry land-grabbers that they stretched lines to take in everything that was loose around those parts. There was no one to make any holler about it. It was just so much extra land and it didn’t look like real money.”
“I have so much business of my own that I’m not interested in making guesses at the business of somebody else,” I remarked. I was in that thing about as deep as I wanted to be.
“But how do I know anything about you?”
“Honors are even!”
The stranger knuckled his forehead, trying to think.
“I don’t want to trig the best thing I ever got hold of in my life because I didn’t buy a little law for to grease the runway,” he said at last. “I may as well tell you—without giving out names and places—that those land-grabbers hooked in a section that belonged to a soldiers’ grant—and that’s why no one ever made a holler. There don’t seem to be any particular heirs to side-tracked soldiers’ grants that have never been thought worth much. No timber, you see; only plain land. But plain land is mighty good property when a railroad takes a notion to build on to it and comes to an end there and a city starts.” The client began to show excitement. “They have laid out lots and built and they haven’t got straight title. I have found it out.”
“That doesn’t seem reasonable,” I said. “Railroads and men who are building cities do not make such mistakes.”
“But they have this time. The same money that grabbed the land has built the railroad. They think they have got it all buttoned up. They didn’t want to expose themselves by starting a movement to make their title straight. They reckon they’ll be able to bluff it out with money and pull and influence down to Boise. That will be easier than to chase around and establish title to a soldiers’ grant. But, by thunder! they can’t stretch or shrink the hide of old earth! There are set points that have got to be measured from and the measurements will tell the story. And re-locations will have to stand—for the law of the United States can’t be built over when the holler is made.”