Chapter 11 - Page 2

guess. When this thing you're buyin' sounds like a potato-ranch, a moss-farm, and a stone-quarry, I quit. An' I don't go in on the deal till I see it an' size it up. What is it?"

"Well, you'll see the cards on the table soon enough. Kindly cast your eyes up there. Do you see the smoke from that cabin? That's where Dwight Sanderson lives. He's holding down a town-site location."

"What else is he holdin' down?"

"That's all," Smoke laughed. "Except rheumatism. I hear he's been suffering from it."

"Say!" Shorty's hand flashed out and with an abrupt shoulder grip brought his comrade to a halt. "You ain't telling me you're buyin' a town-site at this fallin'-off place?"

"That's your tenth guess, and you win. Come on."

"But wait a moment," Shorty pleaded. "Look at it--nothin' but bluffs an' slides, all up-and-down. Where could the town stand?"

"Search me."

"Then you ain't buyin' it for a town?"

"But Dwight Sanderson's selling it for a town," Smoke baffled. "Come on. We've got to climb this slide."

The slide was steep, and a narrow trail zigzagged up it on a formidable Jacob's ladder. Shorty moaned and groaned over the sharp corners and the steep pitches.

"Think of a town-site here. They ain't a flat space big enough for a postage-stamp. An' it's the wrong side of the river. All the freightin' goes the other way. Look at Dawson there. Room to spread for forty thousand more people. Say, Smoke. You're a meat-eater. I know that. An' I know you ain't buyin' it for a town. Then what in Heaven's name are you buyin' it for?"

"To sell, of course."

"But other folks ain't as crazy as old man Sanderson an' you."

"Maybe not in the same way, Shorty. Now I'm going to take this town-site, break it up in parcels, and sell it to a lot of sane people who live over in Dawson."

"Huh! All Dawson's still laughing at you an' me an' them eggs. You want to make 'em laugh some more, hey?"

"I certainly do."

"But it's too danged expensive, Smoke. I helped you make 'em laugh on the eggs, an' my share of the laugh cost me nearly nine thousan' dollars."

"All right. You don't have to come in on this. The profits will be all mine, but you've got to help me just the same."

"Oh, I'll help all right. An' they can laugh at me some more. But nary a ounce do I drop this time.

"What's old Sanderson holdin' it at? A couple of hundred?"

"Ten thousand. I ought to get it for five."

"Wisht I was a minister," Shorty breathed fervently.

"What for?"

"So I could preach the