"Nothing doing?" he said amiably. "Well, maybe you're right. You boys need fit stomachs. Drink's a darn fool play, but—Here's 'how,'" he added, as he gulped down the dash of spirit he had poured out for himself. He smacked his heavy, appreciative lips, and fondly contemplated the label on the bottle. But he was not really reading it.
"Your trade in the dope's growing," he said, his fat fingers fondling the glass bottle neck as though he were loth to release it. "Nearly fifty thousand dollars. That's your credit for a year's trade. It's the biggest in—fourteen years. And it don't begin to touch the demand I got for the darn stuff. I could sell you a hundred thousand dollars' worth, and still ask for more at the same price. You don't get what that means to me," he went on, with a laugh intended to be disarming. "You ain't running a great store that's crazy to hand out dividends. Here's a market gasping. Prices are sky high, an' we can't 'touch.' I tell you it wouldn't lower the price a haf cent if you quadrupled your output. I want to weep. I sure do."
The man in buckskin was filling his pipe from a bag of Indian manufacture.
"Sure," he nodded. "I get that." Then he added very deliberately. "That's why you send your boys out scouting my trail."
Lorson laughed immoderately to hide the effect of the quietly spoken challenge.
"That's business, boy. I buy your stuff—all you can hand me. But if I can jump into your market, why—it's up to me."
"It certainly is up to you." The man lit his pipe and pressed down the tobacco with one of his powerful fingers. "It's up to you more than you know. I once sent back one of your boys. I shan't worry to send back any more. Best save their skins whole, Harris. You'll never jump my market till you can find a feller who can hit a trail such as you never dreamed of. And it's a trail they got to locate first."
The trader leant back in his chair and linked his fat fingers across his wide stomach. His eyes were twinkling as he regarded the visitor from the North. The smile was still in them, but there was a keen speculation in them, too.
"You can't blame me, boy," he said, with perfect amiability. "Hand me all the stuff I'm asking, and your market's as sacred as a woman's virtue. But you don't hand it me, or maybe you can't. Well, it's up to me to supply my needs any way I know. There's nothing crooked in that. If you're reckoning to squeeze my market you can't kick if I try to open it wide. You see, Brand, this stuff grows. I guess it grows in plenty, because you admit you trade it, and I know the Northern neche well enough to guess he only trades sufficient for his needs. See? Well, I've the same right you have to get on to that source. If you know it, hand me what I'm asking for. If you don't, then you can't stop me trying to locate it for myself. If all business propositions were as straight as that there'd be no kick coming to anyone. As it is, the man who's got a kick is me—not you."
"I get all that," the visitor said, without relaxing his attention. "There's no kick on the moral side of this thing. I never said there was. I said save your boys' skins whole. That's all. If you fancy jumping my claim, jump it, but I guess I don't need to tell you what to expect. You sit around here and order other folks to the job. It's they who're going to suffer. Not you."