"Kind of holds you till you wonder why folks ever build cities and things."
"Sure."
"There ain't a muck hole in miles and miles around that you could fall into, and not come out of with a clean conscience an' a wholesome mind. Kind of different to a city."
Gordon stirred. He turned and looked into Silas Mallinsbee's smiling eyes.
"It's—all yours?" he inquired.
"For miles an' miles around. I got nigh a hundred miles of grazing in these hills—and nobody else don't seem to want it. Makes you wonder."
Gordon laughed.
"Say, set a spade into the ground and find a marketable mineral and tell somebody. Then see."
Mallinsbee chewed an unlit cigar, and his chin beard twisted absurdly.
"That's it," he said slowly. "There's nothing to these hills as they are, except to a cattleman, I guess. Cattle don't suit the modern man. Your profitable crop's a three years' waiting, and that don't mean a thing to folk nowadays, except a dead loss of time on the round-up of dollars. They don't figure that once you're good and going that three years' crop comes around once every year. So they miss a deal."