The prospector smiled archly if wisely. “I see,” he said. “You think it’s good for mining, do you? What would you hold your land at as mineral land then if you had a chance to sell it?”
Queeder thought for a while. Two wood doves cooed mournfully in the distance and a blackbird squeaked rustily before he answered.
“I dunno ez I keer tuh sell yit.” He had been getting notions of late as to what might be done if he were to retain his land, bid it up against the desires of one and another, only also the thought of how his wife and children might soon learn and insist on dividing the profits with him if he did sell it was haunting him. Those dreams of getting out in the world and seeing something, of getting away from his family and being happy in some weird, free way, were actually torturing him.
“Who owns the land just below here, then?” asked the stranger, realizing that his idea of buying for little or nothing might as well be abandoned. But at this Queeder winced. For after all, the land adjoining had considerable mineral on it also, as he well knew.
“Why, let me see,” he replied waspishly, with mingled feelings of opposition and indifference. “Marradew,” he finally added, grudgingly. It was no doubt true that this stranger or some other could buy of other farmers if he refused to sell. Still, land around here anywhere must be worth something, his as much as any other. If Dunk Porter had received $3,000—
“If you don’t want to sell, I suppose he might,” the prospector continued pleasantly. The idea was expressed softly, meditatively, indifferently almost.
There was a silence, in which Queeder calmly leaned on his plough handles thinking. The possibility of losing this long-awaited opportunity was dreadful. But he was not floored yet, for all his hunger and greed. Arnold had said that the metal alone, these rocks, was worth two cents a pound, and he could not get it out of his mind that somehow the land itself, the space of soil aside from the metal, must be worth something. How could it be otherwise? Small crops of sorts grew on it.
“I dunno,” he replied defiantly, if internally weakly. “Yuh might ast. I ain’t heerd o’ his wantin’ to sell.” He was determined to risk this last if he had to run after the stranger afterward and beg him to compromise, although he hoped not to have to do that, either. There were other prospectors.
“I don’t know yet whether I want this,” continued the prospector heavily and with an air of profound indifference, “but I’d like to have an option on it, if you’d like to sell. What’ll you take for an option at sixty days on the entire seventy acres?”
The worn farmer did not in the least understand what was meant by the word option, but he was determined not to admit it. “Whut’ll yuh give?” he asked finally, in great doubt as to what to say.