“That's your tenth guess, and you win. Come on.”
“But wait a moment,” Shorty pleaded. “Look at it—nothin' but bluffs an' slides, all up-and-down. Where could the town stand?”
“Search me.”
“Then you ain't buyin' it for a town?”
“But Dwight Sanderson's selling it for a town,” Smoke baffled. “Come on. We've got to climb this slide.”
The slide was steep, and a narrow trail zigzagged up it on a formidable Jacob's ladder. Shorty moaned and groaned over the sharp corners and the steep pitches.
“Think of a town-site here. They ain't a flat space big enough for a postage-stamp. An' it's the wrong side of the river. All the freightin' goes the other way. Look at Dawson there. Room to spread for forty thousand more people. Say, Smoke. You're a meat-eater. I know that. An' I know you ain't buyin' it for a town. Then what in Heaven's name are you buyin' it for?”
“To sell, of course.”
“But other folks ain't as crazy as old man Sanderson an' you.”
“Maybe not in the same way, Shorty. Now I'm going to take this town-site, break it up in parcels, and sell it to a lot of sane people who live over in Dawson.”