“It would be a great compliment to me, if you had that confidence in me, and I’m sure it would make some good money for you.”
“How’d you work it?”
“You have a bunch of horses running here on the ranch, eating their heads off. Many of them are broke, and the others would soon tame down with a scraper behind them. Give them to me and let me put them to work. I’d have to have equipment, too. Your name on the back of my note would get it, and you wouldn’t actually have to put up a dollar. Then we’d make an inventory of what you put into the firm and what I put into it, and we’d divide the earnings in proportion.”
“After payin’ you a salary as manager, of course,” suggested Y.D.
“That’s immaterial. With a bigger outfit and more capital I can make so much more money out of the earnings that I don’t care whether I get a salary or not. But I wouldn’t figure on going on contracting all the time for other people. We might as well have the cream as the skimmed milk. This is the way it’s done. We go to the owner of a block of lots somewhere where there’s no building going on. He’s anxious to start something, because as soon as building starts in that district the lots will sell for two or three times what they do now. We say to him, ‘Give us every second lot in your block and we’ll put a house on it.’ In this way we get the lots for a trifle; perhaps for nothing. Then we build a lot of houses, more or less to the same plan. We put ‘em up quick and cheap. We build ‘em to sell, not to live in. Then we mortgage ‘em for the last cent we can get. Then we put the price up to twice what the mortgage is and sell them as fast as we can build them, getting our equity out and leaving the purchasers to settle with the mortgage company. It’s good for from thirty to forty per cent, profit, not per annum, but per transaction.”
“It sounds interesting,” said Y.D., “an’ I suppose I might as well put my spare horses an’ credit to work. I don’t mind drivin’ down with you to-morrow an’ looking her over first hand.”
This was all Transley had hoped for, and the talk turned to less material matters. After a while Zen joined them, and a little later Y.D. left to attend to some business at the bunk-house.
“Your father and I may go into partnership, Zen,” Transley said to her, when they were alone together. He explained in a general way the venture that was afoot.
“That will be very interesting,” she agreed.
“Will you be interested?”