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?"

"Of course. I am interested in everything that Dad undertakes."

"And are you not--will you not be--just a little interested in the
things that I undertake?"

She paused a moment before replying. The dusk had settled about them,
and he could not see the contour of her