human
I'm beginning to get my feet on bottom, Brouillard, he said, dropping the courtesy prefix and shoving his fat hands deep into the pockets of the dust-coat.
gpt
There's a business proposition here, and it looks mighty good to me. That was a mere nursery notion I gave you a while back--about picking up homesteads and town sites in the Buckskin. The big thing is right here. I tell you, I can smell money in this valley of yours--scads of it.
human
It is only the fragrance of future Reclamation-Service appropriations, he suggested.
gpt
There will be a good bit of money spent here before the Buckskin Desert gets its maiden wetting.
human
I don't mean that at all, was the impatient rejoinder.
gpt
Let me show you: you are going to have a population of some sort, if it's only the population that your big job will bring here. That's the basis. Then you're going to need material by the train load, not the raw stuff, which you say is right here on the ground, but the manufactured article--cement, lumber, and steel. You can ship this material in over the range at prices that will be pretty nearly prohibitory, or, as you suggest, it can be manufactured right here on the spot.
human
The cement and the lumber can be produced here, but not the steel,
gpt
That's where you're off, snapped the millionaire.
human
There are fine ore beds in the Hophras and a pretty good quality of coking coal. Ten or twelve miles of a narrow-gauge railroad would dump the pig metal into the upper end of your valley, and there you are. With a small reduction plant you could tell the big steel people to go hang.