“Well, a thousand dollars in silver weighs about sixty-three pounds—somewhere in there. Now, sixty times sixty is thirty-six hundred, isn’t it? You’d have pretty near two tons of money. You’d have to load a cart to get it home. If the Comanches didn’t get it, it’d sink any wagon you tried to ford.”
“My Lord!” said Jim Nabours. “My good Lord! Look what we escaped, coming North! Tell me, has Miss Taisie got that much money now?”
“She certainly has if she gets it all in silver,” smiled Pattison. “You begin to see what banks are good for?”
“By gum!” exclaimed McCoyne, slapping his thigh. “We certainly have got to have a bank in Abilene, right off! Anyhow, for looks we’ve got to have a church and a school; but a bank is almost as useful as a livery barn.”
“I’ll see what can be done about that when I get back to Kansas City,” said Pattison. “I’d not be surprised to see a million cattle come up the trail in the next two seasons. Think of the silver it would take to pay for them!”
“Mister,” said Jim Nabours, in a very genuine mental distress, “how much silver money would a million cows come to at twenty straight—I mean how many pounds?”
“So much that pretty soon we’ll have to have banks at both ends of the Texas trail,” said Pattison quietly. “So much that before long we’ll have to have railroads north and south instead of trails. So much that before long there’ll be a dozen towns instead of one handling the cattle coming North. So much that all this country north and west of here is going to be settled with people—farms, towns, railroads. Trail makers? The first trail maker of the world was a cow!”
He dropped his chin for an instant in thought.
“And the men who’ll be in on that,” he added presently, “are the ones who can see it now and not after a while. My new partner and I can see it now. We traded quick. I always trade fast or not at all.”
“I’ve got five thousand paper dollars in my saddle pockets,” said he. “Where’s Miss Taisie at? I want to pay off the men. They’ll be wanting a little frolic. Won’t you come along and find her?”
He looked at Dan McMasters keenly, a little sadly. But though McMasters directed him to the Drovers’ Cottage, he excused himself. For this reason not even cheery Lou Gore could make Taisie Lockhart smile.