In the meantime, Dad was on his way to Paradise, to set the town’s one real estate agent to work buying more land for him. “Why don’t you send for Ben Skutt?” asked Bunny; but Dad answered that Ben was a rascal—he had caught him trying to collect a commission from the other party. And anyhow, a local man could do it better—Dad would buy him with an extra commission, let Bunny watch and see how it was worked. Fortunately, Dad had taken the precaution to bring along a cashier’s check for three thousand dollars. “I didn’t know jist how long we might camp,” he said, with his sly humor.
So they came to an office labelled, “J. H. Hardacre, Real Estate, Insurance and Loans.” Mr. Hardacre sat with his feet on his desk and a cigar in his mouth, waiting for his prey; he was a lean, hungry-looking spider, and was not fooled for an instant by Dad’s old khaki hunting-clothes—he knew that here was money, and he swung his feet to the floor and sat right up. Dad took a chair, and remarked on the weather, and asked about the earthquake, and finally said that he had a relative who wanted to live in the open for his health, and Dad had jist bought the Abel Watkins place, and he jist thought he’d like to raise goats on a bigger scale, and could he get some land adjoining? Mr. Hardacre answered right away, there was a pile of that hill-stuff to be had; there was the Bandy tract, right alongside—and Mr. Hardacre got out a big map and began to show Dad with his pencil, there was close to a thousand acres of that, but it was mostly back in the hills, and all rocks. Dad asked what it could be bought for, and Mr. Hardacre said all that hill-stuff was held at five or six dollars an acre. He began to show other tracts, and Dad said wait now, and he got a paper and pencil and began to jot down the names and the acreage and the price. Apparently everything around here could be bought—whenever the man failed to include any tract, Dad would ask “And what about that?” and Mr. Hardacre would say, “That’s the old Rascum tract—yes, I reckon that could be got.” And Dad said, “Let’s list them all,” and a queer look began to come over Mr. Hardacre’s face—it was dawning upon him that this was the great hour of his life.
“Now, Mr. Hardacre,” said Dad, “let’s you and me talk turkey. I want to buy some land, if it can be got reasonable. Of course as soon as people find you want it, they begin to boost the price; so let’s get that clear, I want it jist enough to pay a fair price, and I don’t want it no more than that, and if anybody starts a-boostin’ you jist tell ’em to forget it, and I’ll forget it, too. But all the land you can buy reasonable, you buy for me, and collect your commission from the seller in the regular way, and besides that, you’ll get a five percent commission from me. That means, I want you to be my man, and do everything you can to get me the land at the lowest prices. I don’t need to point out to you that my one idea is to buy quick and quiet, so people won’t have time to decide there’s a boom on. You get me?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Hardacre. “But I’m not sure how quietly it can be done; this is a pretty small place, there’s lots of talk, and it takes time to put through a deal.”
“It won’t take no time at all if you jist handle it my way and use good sense. You don’t mention me, you do the buyin’ for an unknown client, and you buy options for cash—that means, if the people are hereabouts, you close the deals right off.”
“But that’ll take quite a bunch of money,” said Mr. Hardacre, a little frightened.
“I got a little change in my pocket,” said Dad, “and I brought a cashier’s check for three thousand, that I can turn into cash in the mornin’. You see, Mr. Hardacre, I happen to be jist crazy about quail shootin’, and I had the idea that if I found plenty of quail, I’d get a little land to shoot over. But get this clear, I can shoot quail on
