I guess I didn’t show much interest—I was afraid to show any. I hoped the man would shut up and go away.
“Don’t you believe what I am telling you?” he demanded.
“I am merely wondering how it comes about that you know so much, more than everybody else about a section of land that has been surveyed for a railroad and a new city.”
“My father was a pioneer in this country. One day, after they began to build the railroad, I was in the record-office and happened to remember some of the things he told me about the days when they were grabbing land in these parts. I looked up records, I did measuring, I did some reckoning, and within the last two days I have made sure that I’ve got the bind on the city of Breed.”
In his excitement he spat out the name. Then he promptly began to damn himself. “I never ought to take a drink of liquor,” he declared. “But when it came to me that I could run in there and re-locate the best hunk of that land, I reckoned I needed to have my nerve with me, and so I’ve been bracing my nerve. But the trouble with me is, when my nerve is braced my tongue is loose. Now I suppose I’ve got to take you in! But I’m dangerous. However, I’ll take you in.”
I didn’t say anything.
“What do you get a day for your best law work?”
“I don’t work by the day.” I wondered just how lawyers did work.
“Well, then, name your price for standing by me against the sharks they’ll bring to try to beat me out. I don’t know anything about hiring lawyers.”
“I’ll take half.” I thought that remark would send him hipering away.