Smoke Bellew

“I don’t want ‘em for myself,” Wild Water breathed in a still lower voice. “Shir ‘em up and present ‘em to Miss Arral there.”

“I’ll attend to it personally myself,” Slavovitch assured him.

“An’ don’t forget – compliments of me,” Wild Water concluded, relaxing his detaining clutch on the proprietor’s shoulder.

Pretty Lucille Arral was gazing forlornly at the strip of breakfast bacon and the tinned mashed potatoes on her plate when Slavovitch placed before her two shirred eggs.

“Compliments of Mr. Wild Water,” they at the next table heard him say.

Smoke acknowledged to himself that it was a fine bit of acting – the quick, joyous flash in the face of her, the impulsive turn of the head, the spontaneous forerunner of a smile that was only checked by a superb self-control which resolutely drew her face back so that she could say something to the restaurant proprietor.

Smoke felt the kick of Wild Water’s moccasined foot under the table.

“Will she eat ‘em? – that’s the question – will she eat ‘em?” the latter whispered agonizingly.

And with sidelong glances they saw Lucille Arral hesitate, almost push the dish from her, then surrender to its lure.

“I’ll take them eggs,” Wild Water said to Smoke. “The contract holds. Did you see her? Did you see her! She almost smiled. I know her. It’s all fixed. Two more eggs to-morrow an’ she’ll forgive an’ make up. If she wasn’t here I’d shake hands, Smoke, I’m that grateful. You ain’t a robber; you’re a philanthropist.”

Smoke returned jubilantly up the hill to the cabin, only to find Shorty playing solitaire in black despair. Smoke had long since learned that whenever his partner got out the cards for solitaire it was a warning signal that the bottom had dropped out of the world.

“Go ‘way, don’t talk to me,” was the first rebuff Smoke received.

But Shorty soon thawed into a freshet of speech.

“It’s all off with the big Swede,” he groaned. “The corner’s busted. They’ll be sellin’ sherry an’ egg in all the saloons to-morrow at a dollar a flip. They ain’t no starvin’ orphan child in Dawson that won’t be wrappin’ its tummy around eggs. What d’ye think I run into? – a geezer with three thousan’ eggs – d’ye get me? Three thousan’, an’ just freighted in from Forty Mile.”

“Fairy stories,” Smoke doubted.

“Fairy hell! I seen them eggs. Gautereaux’s his name – a whackin’ big, blue-eyed French-Canadian husky. He asked for you first, then took me to the side and jabbed me straight to the heart. It was our cornerin’ eggs that got him started. He knowed about them three thousan’ at Forty Mile an’ just went an’ got ‘em. ‘Show ‘em to me,’ I says. An’ he did. There was his dog-teams, an’ a couple of Indian drivers, restin’ down the bank where they’d just pulled in from Forty Mile. An’ on the sleds was soap-boxes – teeny wooden soap-boxes.

“We took one out behind a ice-jam in the middle of the river an’ busted it open. Eggs! – full of ‘em, all packed in sawdust. Smoke, you an’ me lose. We’ve been gamblin’. D’ye know what he had the gall to say to me? – that they was all ourn at ten dollars a egg. D’ye know what he was doin’ when I left his cabin? – drawin’ a sign of eggs for sale. Said he’d give us first choice, at ten a throw, till 2 P. M., an’ after that, if we didn’t come across, he’d bust the market higher’n a kite. Said he wasn’t no business man, but that he knowed a good thing when he seen it – meanin’ you an’ me, as I took it.”

“It’s all right,” Smoke said cheerfully. “Keep your shirt on an’ let me think a moment. Quick action and team play is all that’s needed. I’ll get Wild Water here at two o’clock to take delivery of eggs. You buy that Gautereaux’s eggs. Try and make a bargain. Even if you pay ten dollars apiece for them, Wild Water will take them off our hands at the same price. If you can get them cheaper, why, we make a profit as well. Now go to it. Have them here by not later than two o’clock. Borrow Colonel Bowie’s dogs and take our team. Have them here by two sharp.”

“Say, Smoke,” Shorty called, as his partner started down the hill. “Better take an umbrella. I wouldn’t be none surprised to see the weather rainin’ eggs before you get back.”

Smoke found Wild Water at the M. & M., and a stormy half-hour ensued.

“I warn you we’ve picked up some more eggs,” Smoke said, after Wild Water had agreed to bring his dust to the cabin at two o’clock and pay on delivery.

“You’re luckier at finding eggs than me,” Wild Water admitted. “Now, how many eggs have you got now? – an’ how much dust do I tote up the hill?”

Smoke consulted his notebook. “As it stands now, according to Shorty’s figures, we’ve three thousand nine hundred and sixty-two eggs. Multiply by ten – ”

“Forty thousand dollars!” Wild Water bellowed. “You said there was only something like nine hundred eggs. It’s a stickup! I won’t stand for it!”

Smoke drew the contract from his pocket and pointed to the PAY ON DELIVERY. “No mention is made of the number of eggs to be delivered. You agreed to pay ten dollars for every egg we delivered to you. Well, we’ve got the eggs, and a signed contract is a signed contract. Honestly, though, Wild Water, we didn’t know about those other eggs until afterward. Then we had to buy them in order to make our corner good.”

For five long minutes, in choking silence, Wild Water fought a battle with himself, then reluctantly gave in.

“I’m in bad,” he said brokenly. “The landscape’s fair sproutin’ eggs. An’ the quicker I get out the better. There might come a landslide of ‘em. I’ll be there at two o’clock. But forty thousand dollars!”

“It’s only thirty-nine thousand six hundred an’ twenty,” Smoke corrected. “It’ll weigh two hundred pounds,” Wild Water raved on. “I’ll have to freight it up with a dog-team.”

“We’ll lend you our teams to carry the eggs away,” Smoke volunteered.

“But where’ll I cache ‘em? Never mind. I’ll be there. But as long as I live I’ll never eat another egg. I’m full sick of ‘em.”

At half-past one, doubling the dog-teams for the steep pitch of the hill, Shorty arrived with Gautereaux’s eggs. “We dang near double our winnings,” Shorty told Smoke, as they piled the soap-boxes inside the cabin. “I holds ‘m down to eight dollars, an’ after he cussed loco in French he falls for it. Now that’s two dollars clear profit to us for each egg, an’ they’re three thousan’ of ‘em. I paid ‘m in full. Here’s the receipt.”

While Smoke got out the gold-scales and prepared for business, Shorty devoted himself to calculation.

“There’s the figgers,” he announced triumphantly. “We win twelve thousan’ nine hundred an’ seventy dollars. An’ we don’t do Wild Water no harm. He wins Miss Arral. Besides, he gets all them eggs. It’s sure a bargain-counter all around. Nobody loses.”

“Even Gautereaux’s twenty-four thousand to the good,” Smoke laughed, “minus, of course, what the eggs and the freighting cost him. And if Wild Water plays the corner, he may make a profit out of the eggs himself.”

Promptly at two o’clock, Shorty, peeping, saw Wild Water coming up the hill. When he entered he was brisk and businesslike. He took off his big bearskin coat, hung it on a nail, and sat down at the table.

“Bring on them eggs, you pirates,” he commenced. “An’ after this day, if you know what’s good for you, never mention eggs to me again.”

They began on the miscellaneous assortment of the original corner, all three men counting. When two hundred had been reached, Wild Water suddenly cracked an egg on the edge of the table and opened it deftly with his thumbs.

“Hey! Hold on!” Shorty objected.

“It’s my egg, ain’t it?” Wild Water snarled. “I’m paying ten dollars for it, ain’t I? But I ain’t buying no pig in a poke. When I cough up ten bucks an egg I want to know what I’m gettin’.”

“If you don’t like it, I’ll eat it,” Shorty volunteered maliciously.

Wild Water looked and smelled and shook his head. “No, you don’t, Shorty. That’s a good egg. Gimme a pail. I’m goin’ to eat it myself for supper.”

Thrice again Wild Water cracked good eggs experimentally and put them in the pail beside him.

“Two more than you figgered, Shorty,” he said at the end of the count. “Nine hundred an’ sixty-four, not sixty-two.”

“My mistake,” Shorty acknowledged handsomely. “We’ll throw ‘em in for good measure.”

“Guess you can afford to,” Wild Water accepted grimly. “Pass the batch. Nine thousan’ six hundred an’ twenty dollars. I’ll pay for it now. Write a receipt, Smoke.”

“Why not count the rest,” Smoke suggested, “and pay all at once?”

Wild Water shook his head. “I’m no good at figgers. One batch at a time an’ no mistakes.”

Going to his fur coat, from each of the side pockets he drew forth two sacks of dust, so rotund and long that they resembled bologna sausages. When the first batch had been paid for, there remained in the gold-sacks not more than several hundred dollars.

A soap-box was carried to the table, and the count of the three thousand began. At the end of one hundred, Wild Water struck an egg sharply against the edge of the table. There was no crack. The resultant sound was like that of the striking of a sphere of solid marble.

“Frozen solid,” he remarked, striking more sharply.

He held the egg up, and they could see the shell powdered to minute fragments along the line of impact.

“Huh!” said Shorty. “It ought to be solid, seein’ it has just been freighted up from Forty Mile. It’ll take an ax to bust it.”

“Me for the ax,” said Wild Water.

Smoke brought the ax, and Wild Water, with the clever hand and eye of the woodsman, split the egg cleanly in half. The appearance of the egg’s interior was anything but satisfactory. Smoke felt a premonitory chill. Shorty was more valiant. He held one of the halves to his nose.

“Smells all right,” he said.

“But it looks all wrong,” Wild Water contended. “An’ how can it smell when the smell’s frozen along with the rest of it? Wait a minute.”

He put the two halves into a frying-pan and placed the latter on the front lid of the hot stove. Then the three men, with distended, questing nostrils, waited in silence. Slowly an unmistakable odor began to drift through the room. Wild Water forbore to speak, and Shorty remained dumb despite conviction.

“Throw it out,” Smoke cried, gasping.

“What’s the good?” asked Wild Water. “We’ve got to sample the rest.”

“Not in this cabin.” Smoke coughed and conquered a qualm. “Chop them open, and we can test by looking at them. Throw it out, Shorty – Throw it out! Phew! And leave the door open!”

Box after box was opened; egg after egg, chosen at random, was chopped in two; and every egg carried the same message of hopeless, irremediable decay.

“I won’t ask you to eat ‘em, Shorty,” Wild Water jeered, “an’ if you don’t mind, I can’t get outa here too quick. My contract called for GOOD eggs. If you’ll loan me a sled an’ team I’ll haul them good ones away before they get contaminated.”

Smoke helped in loading the sled. Shorty sat at the table, the cards laid before him for solitaire.

“Say, how long you been holdin’ that corner?” was Wild Water’s parting gibe.

Smoke made no reply, and, with one glance at his absorbed partner, proceeded to fling the soap boxes out into the snow.

“Say, Shorty, how much did you say you paid for that three thousand?” Smoke queried gently.

“Eight dollars. Go ‘way. Don’t talk to me. I can figger as well as you. We lose seventeen thousan’ on the flutter, if anybody should ride up on a dog-sled an’ ask you. I figgered that out while waitin’ for the first egg to smell.”

Smoke pondered a few minutes, then again broke silence. “Say, Shorty. Forty thousand dollars gold weighs two hundred pounds. Wild Water borrowed our sled and team to haul away his eggs. He came up the hill without a sled. Those two sacks of dust in his coat pockets weighed about twenty pounds each. The understanding was cash on delivery. He brought enough dust to pay for the good eggs. He never expected to pay for those three thousand. He knew they were bad. Now how did he know they were bad? What do you make of it, anyway?”

Shorty gathered the cards, started to shuffle a new deal, then paused. “Huh! That ain’t nothin’. A child could answer it. We lose seventeen thousan’. Wild Water wins seventeen thousan’. Them eggs of Gautereaux’s was Wild Water’s all the time. Anything else you’re curious to know?”

“Yes. Why in the name of common sense didn’t you find out whether those eggs were good before you paid for them?”

“Just as easy as the first question. Wild Water swung the bunco game timed to seconds. I hadn’t no time to examine them eggs. I had to hustle to get ‘em here for delivery. An’ now, Smoke, lemme ask you one civil question. What did you say was the party’s name that put this egg corner idea into your head?”

Shorty had lost the sixteenth consecutive game of solitaire, and Smoke was casting about to begin the preparation of supper, when Colonel Bowie knocked at the door, handed Smoke a letter, and went on to his own cabin.

“Did you see his face?” Shorty raved. “He was almost bustin’ to keep it straight. It’s the big ha! ha! for you an’ me, Smoke. We won’t never dast show our faces again in Dawson.”

The letter was from Wild Water, and Smoke read it aloud:

Dear Smoke and Shorty: I write to ask, with compliments of the season, your presence at a supper to-night at Slavovitch’s joint. Miss Arral will be there and so will Gautereaux. Him and me was pardners down at Circle five years ago. He is all right and is going to be best man. About them eggs. They come into the country four years back. They was bad when they come in. They was bad when they left California. They always was bad. They stopped at Carluk one winter, and one winter at Nutlik, and last winter at Forty Mile, where they was sold for storage. And this winter I guess they stop at Dawson. Don’t keep them in a hot room. Lucille says to say you and her and me has sure made some excitement for Dawson. And I say the drinks is on you, and that goes.

Respectfully your friend,W. W.

“Well? What have you got to say?” Smoke queried. “We accept the invitation, of course?”

“I got one thing to say,” Shorty answered. “An’ that is Wild Water won’t never suffer if he goes broke. He’s a good actor – a gosh-blamed good actor. An’ I got another thing to say: my figgers is all wrong. Wild Water wins seventeen thousan’ all right, but he wins more ‘n that. You an’ me has made him a present of every good egg in the Klondike – nine hundred an’ sixty-four of ‘em, two thrown in for good measure. An’ he was that ornery, mean cussed that he packed off the three opened ones in the pail. An’ I got a last thing to say. You an’ me is legitimate prospectors an’ practical gold-miners. But when it comes to fi-nance we’re sure the fattest suckers that ever fell for the get-rich-quick bunco. After this it’s you an’ me for the high rocks an’ tall timber, an’ if you ever mention eggs to me we dissolve pardnership there an’ then. Get me?”

XI. THE TOWN-SITE OF TRA-LEE

Smoke and Shorty encountered each other, going in opposite directions, at the corner where stood the Elkhorn saloon. The former’s face wore a pleased expression, and he was walking briskly. Shorty, on the other hand, was slouching along in a depressed and indeterminate fashion.

“Whither away?” Smoke challenged gaily.

“Danged if I know,” came the disconsolate answer. “Wisht I did. They ain’t nothin’ to take me anywheres. I’ve set two hours in the deadest game of draw – nothing excitin’, no hands, an’ broke even. Played a rubber of cribbage with Skiff Mitchell for the drinks, an’ now I’m that languid for somethin’ doin’ that I’m perambulatin’ the streets on the chance of seein’ a dogfight, or a argument, or somethin’.”

“I’ve got something better on hand,” Smoke answered. “That’s why I was looking for you. Come on along.”

“Now?”

“Sure.”

“Where to?”

“Across the river to make a call on old Dwight Sanderson.”

“Never heard of him,” Shorty said dejectedly. “An’ never heard of no one living across the river anyway. What’s he want to live there for? Ain’t he got no sense?”

“He’s got something to sell,” Smoke laughed.

“Dogs? A gold-mine? Tobacco? Rubber boots?”

Smoke shook his head to each question. “Come along on and find out, because I’m going to buy it from him on a spec, and if you want you can come in half.”

“Don’t tell me it’s eggs!” Shorty cried, his face twisted into an expression of facetious and sarcastic alarm.

“Come on along,” Smoke told him. “And I’ll give you ten guesses while we’re crossing the ice.”

They dipped down the high bank at the foot of the street and came out upon the ice-covered Yukon. Three-quarters of a mile away, directly opposite, the other bank of the stream uprose in precipitous bluffs hundreds of feet in height. Toward these bluffs, winding and twisting in and out among broken and upthrown blocks of ice, ran a slightly traveled trail. Shorty trudged at Smoke’s heels, beguiling the time with guesses at what Dwight Sanderson had to sell.

“Reindeer? Copper-mine or brick-yard? That’s one guess. Bear-skins, or any kind of skins? Lottery tickets? A potato-ranch?”

“Getting near it,” Smoke encouraged. “And better than that.”

“Two potato-ranches? A cheese-factory? A moss-farm?”

“That’s not so bad, Shorty. It’s not a thousand miles away.”

“A quarry?”

“That’s as near as the moss-farm and the potato-ranch.”

“Hold on. Let me think. I got one guess comin’.” Ten silent minutes passed. “Say, Smoke, I ain’t goin’ to use that last 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 gosh-dangdest, eloquentest sermon on a text you may have hearn – to wit: a fool an’ his money.”

“Come in,” they heard Dwight Sanderson yell irritably, when they knocked at his door, and they entered to find him squatted by a stone fireplace and pounding coffee wrapped in a piece of flour-sacking.

“What d’ye want?” he demanded harshly, emptying the pounded coffee into the coffee-pot that stood on the coals near the front of the fireplace.

“To talk business,” Smoke answered. “You’ve a town-site located here, I understand. What do you want for it?”

“Ten thousand dollars,” came the answer. “And now that I’ve told you, you can laugh, and get out. There’s the door. Good-by.”

“But I don’t want to laugh. I know plenty of funnier things to do than to climb up this cliff of yours. I want to buy your town-site.”

“You do, eh? Well, I’m glad to hear sense.” Sanderson came over and sat down facing his visitors, his hands resting on the table and his eyes cocking apprehensively toward the coffee-pot. “I’ve told you my price, and I ain’t ashamed to tell you again – ten thousand. And you can laugh or buy, it’s all one to me.”

To show his indifference he drummed with his knobby knuckles on the table and stared at the coffee-pot. A minute later he began to hum a monotonous “Tra-la-loo, tra-la-lee, tra-la-lee, tra-la-loo.”

“Now look here, Mr. Sanderson,” said Smoke. “This town-site isn’t worth ten thousand. If it was worth that much it would be worth a hundred thousand just as easily. If it isn’t worth a hundred thousand – and you know it isn’t – then it isn’t worth ten cents.”

Sanderson drummed with his knuckles and hummed, “Tra-la-loo, tra-la-lee,” until the coffee-pot boiled over. Settling it with a part cup of cold water, and placing it to one side of the warm hearth, he resumed his seat. “How much will you offer?” he asked of Smoke.

“Five thousand.”

Shorty groaned.

Again came an interval of drumming and of tra-loo-ing and tra-lee-ing.

“You ain’t no fool,” Sanderson announced to Smoke. “You said if it wasn’t worth a hundred thousand it wasn’t worth ten cents. Yet you offer five thousand for it. Then it IS worth a hundred thousand.”

“You can’t make twenty cents out of it,” Smoke replied heatedly. “Not if you stayed here till you rot.”

“I’ll make it out of you.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Then I reckon I’ll stay an’ rot,” Sanderson answered with an air of finality.

He took no further notice of his guests, and went about his culinary tasks as if he were alone. When he had warmed over a pot of beans and a slab of sour-dough bread, he set the table for one and proceeded to eat.

“No, thank you,” Shorty murmured. “We ain’t a bit hungry. We et just before we come.”

“Let’s see your papers,” Smoke said at last. Sanderson fumbled under the head of his bunk and tossed out a package of documents. “It’s all tight and right,” he said. “That long one there, with the big seals, come all the way from Ottawa. Nothing territorial about that. The national Canadian government cinches me in the possession of this town-site.”

“How many lots you sold in the two years you’ve had it?” Shorty queried.

“None of your business,” Sanderson answered sourly. “There ain’t no law against a man living alone on his town-site if he wants to.”

“I’ll give you five thousand,” Smoke said. Sanderson shook his head.

“I don’t know which is the craziest,” Shorty lamented. “Come outside a minute, Smoke. I want to whisper to you.”

Reluctantly Smoke yielded to his partner’s persuasions.

“Ain’t it never entered your head,” Shorty said, as they stood in the snow outside the door, “that they’s miles an’ miles of cliffs on both sides of this fool town-site that don’t belong to nobody an’ that you can have for the locatin’ and stakin’?”

“They won’t do,” Smoke answered.

“Why won’t they?”

“It makes you wonder, with all those miles and miles, why I’m buying this particular spot, doesn’t it?”

“It sure does,” Shorty agreed.

“And that’s the very point,” Smoke went on triumphantly. “If it makes you wonder, it will make others wonder. And when they wonder they’ll come a-running. By your own wondering you prove it’s sound psychology. Now, Shorty, listen to me; I’m going to hand Dawson a package that will knock the spots out of the egg-laugh. Come on inside.”