'No, but honestly, dad, what do you think?'
'Well, I'll tell you. It's pretty well done. But it's too hard. Those white-washed stones. Too prim. It certainly does provide a fine night's lodging for motor tourists--probably better than I do at the Commercial. But it's forbidding. Not only would no tourist who was tired out want to stay on there for a day or two, but the whole place positively forbids him to stay. I know. It's the new thing. Fine. The auto tourist can start out at five a.m., and no twisty city streets to bother him. Yes. All right. But I'd like to have a place as efficient as that, for the fast driver--like you!--but that would also have a view or scenery or whatever you want to call it, and where a certain percentage of the tourists would like to stay for a couple days.'
His voice grew strong and confident. Luciano Mora was lost, and Alec, and Mark Elphinstone, but he had a loyal friend now, who took him seriously--his son.
'I don't see, Boy, why we couldn't have everything that Kit Carson Park has: Low prices. Neat, clean cabins. No damn beauty-parlours! Ease in parking late at night, when you're tired out, and ease in getting away next morning. But different: Much better food--not just Hamburger sandwiches and apple pie. Daily specialities in food. Something to do for folks you could persuade to stay over a couple days: tennis courts, a library, a big terrace with wicker chairs where they'd like to loaf, and some sort of view besides the level prairie. Well, I'll think about it.'
Ten miles from Lemuel, Myron cried, 'Hey! Whoa-up! I want to go up this next side-road to the left.'
'Sure, you bet, dad. Where's it go?'
'You'll see.'
Two hundred feet along the side-road, they climbed in sunset over the rolling billows of the prairie to an upland which, though it was only eighty feet above the general level of the plain, looked across twenty miles, with a creek bordered with cottonwood and willows just below them.
'Kind of a pretty place, don't you think?' said Myron.
'Gee, it certainly is, dad!' said Luke.
'Swimming pool down there. Golf course there to the right. Central building, stores and dancing and everything, with rooms for lone drivers that don't want cottages, right here. And the best mince pie in the State of Kansas. I can beat Kit Carson Park as a tourist camp--you and I can, if we work together.'
'I bet we can, dad! Why don't you buy the land?'
'I did. Yesterday,' said Myron.
THE END