human
You let up before supper-time?
gpt
I did, said Brooke, a trifle grimly.
human
I broke up the Kenawa planer in the Tomlinson mill. That's why I came away. I'm not going back again.
gpt
Then it was only the square thing. Since we've been here that planer has broke up two or three men. Held out a month, didn't you? What were you at before that?
human
Road-making, firing at a cannery, surrey packing. I've a ranch that doesn't pay, you see?
gpt
So have we! Half the deadbeats in this country are landholders, too. Two men couldn't get away with many of the big trees on our lot in a lifetime, and one has to light out and earn something to put the winter through. This month Jake and I have made 'bout twenty dollars between us. I guess your trouble's want of capital--same as ours. One can't do a great deal with a hundred dollars. Still, you'd have had more than that when you came in?
human
I had, said Brooke, drily.
gpt
I put six thousand into the land, or rather the land-agent's bank, besides what I spent on clearing a little of it, and when I've paid my board and for the clothes I bought, I'll have about four dollars now.
human
That's how those land-company folks get rich, said one of the men.
gpt
Was it a piece of snow mountain he sold you, or a bottomless swamp?
human
Rock. One might have drained a swamp.
gpt
Well, said the first of them,
human
No. It was Devine.
gpt
Now, if any man in that business goes tolerably straight, it's Devine, said one of them.
human
Of course, if a green Britisher comes along bursting to hand over the bills for any kind of land, he'll oblige him, but I'd sit down and think a little before I called Devine a thief. Anyway, he's quite a big man in the province.
gpt
I can't see any particular difference between a swindler and a thief. In any case, the man robbed me, and if I live long enough I'll get even with him.
human
That's going to be quite a big contract, said one of the men.
gpt
It's best to lie low and wait for another fool when you've been taken in. Besides, there's many a worse man in his own line than Devine. There was one fellow up at Jamieson's when the rush was on. He could talk the shoes off a mule--and he was an Englishman. Whatever any man wanted, fruit-land, mineral-land, sawing lumber, and gold outcrop, he'd got. Picked it out on the survey map and sold it him. For 'most a month he rolled the dollars in, and then the circus began. The folks who'd made the deals went up to see their land, and most of them found it belonged to another man. You see, if three of them wanted maple bush, that's generally good soil and light to clear, and he'd only one piece of it, he sold the same lot to all of them. They went back with clubs, but that man knew when to light out, and he didn't wait for them.