“All right, if you'll tell me what's bothering you.”
He looked at her quickly.
“Nothin',” he grunted. “Yes, there is, too. What's the difference? You'd know it sooner or later. You ought to see old Chavon. His face is that long he can't walk without bumpin' his knee on his chin. His gold-mine's peterin' out.”
“Gold mine!”
“His clay pit. It's the same thing. He's gettin' twenty cents a yard for it from the brickyard.”
“And that means the end of your teaming contract.” Saxon saw the disaster in all its hugeness. “What about the brickyard people?”
“Worried to death, though they've kept secret about it. They've had men out punchin' holes all over the hills for a week, an' that Jap chemist settin' up nights analyzin' the rubbish they've brought in. It's peculiar stuff, that clay, for what they want it for, an' you don't find it everywhere. Them experts that reported on Chavon's pit made one hell of a mistake. Maybe they was lazy with their borin's. Anyway, they slipped up on the amount of clay they was in it. Now don't get to botherin'. It'd come out somehow. You can't do nothin'.”
“But I can,” Saxon insisted. “We won't buy Ramona.”
“You ain't got a thing to do with that,” he answered. “I 'm buyin' her, an' her price don't cut any figure alongside the big game I 'm playin'. Of course, I can always sell my horses. But that puts a stop to their makin' money, an' that brickyard contract was fat.”
“But if you get some of them in on the road work for the county?” she suggested.