“Near as I can tell, you’re the very man I’m looking for. I’m the manager and vice-president of the land company that’s been buying stuff up in here for the last twenty years. We’ve got big holdings up in there—on the Laurel and Newfound, and the Rattlesnake and Buffalo, and Big Creek and Hell-fer-Sartan—we’ve got timber or coal or both located all through there. Now, listen—I’m in here now because there’s talk of oil being found in there. Do you know anything about that?” “They said they found some along some of the creeks not fur from whar I lived at.” “Have you ever heard anything about the railroad?” “Yes, I was huntin’ on Hell-fer-Sartin not more’n two months ago, an’ I seen the stakes. There hain’t no other way they kin git through but only jest that one.” “What is there in the way of moonshining going on in there? Any danger for an outsider to go in there?” “I don’t know nothin’ at all about that,” said David Joslin. “If I did I wouldn’t tell ye.” Haddon sat frowning in silence for quite a while. “You’re a funny lot, you mountain people,” said he. “It’s hard to do business with you.” “Some ways it mought be hard with me,” replied Joslin. “Well, don’t you need the money that I could pay you?” “There’s nobody in the world needs money more’n I do. But I tolt ye I was headed the other way.” “Won’t you go back in if I pay you the right wages?” “No, I’m headed the other way.” “Well, now, listen,” said Haddon irritably. “I need some native that knows those damned people. They tell me there’s no such thing as roads, and you have to ride horseback or muleback wherever you want to go.” “That’s so,” replied the mountain man. “That’s the onliest way. There hain’t no sich thing as towns. Ye’d have to stop at the cabins. Ary man’s welcome in there if they think he’s all right, an’ hain’t a-lookin’ fer nothin’ er nobody.” “Oh, ho!” said Haddon, nodding understandingly. “Some trouble in there, eh? Well, I suppose you’ve seen your share of it.” He grinned, as he looked at Joslin’s head, where he had already noted the wound still unhealed. “We don’t say nothin’ about sich matters in these hills, stranger,” said Joslin quietly. “I’m a-tellin’ ye if I went in thar with ye, ye’d be all right. But I hain’t a-goin’. Ye kain’t noways hire me.” “You’re pretty danged independent,” rejoined Haddon testily. “The woman here just told me that you’re wearing my coat and my shoes right now. You must be hard up against it. Probably you were run out of these hills, and that’s why you want to get outside. And now I offer you fair pay—good pay, in fact—five dollars a day, or ten—just to go in and show me the timber and coal in that country, which you don’t own but we own—and you say you won’t go. Is that the way you treat a stranger?”