"Amusin', ain't it?" he said, without appreciation.
Gordon shook his head.
"If you only knew—it is."
Peter went on with his food for a few moments in silence.
"I s'pose the boom will come big when it does start?" hazarded Gordon presently.
"Big? Say, you ain't got a grip on things yet. Snake's Fall could supply the whole—not half—world with high-grade stove coal. Does that tell you anything? No? Wal, it jest means that when the railroad says the word, hundred-dollar plots 'll fetch a thousand dollars in a week, and maybe ten thousand in a month or less. I tell you right here that in six months from the time the railroad talks there'll be fifty thousand speculators right here, and we'll most of us rake in our piles. We only got to jump in at the start, maybe a bit before, and the game's right in our hands. Get me? I tell you, sir, this is bigger than the first Kootenay rush and nigh as big as the Cobalt boom in Canada."
Gordon was impressed.
"And to think I came here by accident."
"Accident?"
"You see, I was persuaded—against my will."