Safety sniffs in a baffled manner and tries to worm out a hint, but they say it’s a thing would go like wildfire once it got known, being so much tastier than whale meat and easier to handle, and eating almost nothing.

“Whales was pretty good,” says Sandy; “but since the boss got a line on this other animal she’s disposed of her whale interests for seventy-three thousand dollars.”

Buck Devine says I showed him the check, that come in yesterday’s mail, and let him hold it a minute so he could say he once held seventy-three thousand dollars in his hand just like that.  And the money was to be put into this new business, with the boys being let in on the ground floor, like they had been with the whales.  Sandy says that in probably a year from now, or eighteen months at the most, he won’t be a thing but a dissipated millionaire.  Nothing but that!

Safety is peculiar in his mind.  If you told him you found a million gold dollars up in the top of that jack pine he wouldn’t believe it, yet still and all he’d get a real thrill out of it.  He certainly does cherish money.  The very notion of it is romantic to him.  And he must of been thrilled now.  He hung round, listening keenly while the boys squandered their vast wealth in various reprehensible ways, trying to get some idea about the new animal.  Finally he sniffed some more, and they was all crazy as loons, and went off.  But where does he go but over to old Pete at the woodpile and keeps him from his work for ten minutes trying to get the new animal’s name out of Pete.  But he can’t trap the redman into any admissions.  All he can find out is that Pete is serious and excited.

Then he come up to ask me once more if he couldn’t take some mules off my hands.  He found out quick and short that he couldn’t.  Still he hung round, talking nonsense as far as I could make out, because I hadn’t yet been let in on the new elephant proposition.  He says he hears I’m taking up a new line of stock, the same not being whales nor anything that swims, and if it’s more than I can swing by myself, why, he’s a good neighbour of long standing, and able in a pinch, mebbe, to scrape up a few thousand dollars, or even more if it’s a sure cinch, and how about it, and from one old friend to another just what is this new line?

Being busy I acted short.  I said I was sticking to cattle in spite of the infamous gossip against ’em, and all reports to the contrary was mere society chatter.  Still he acted like I was trying to fool him.  He went out saying if I changed my mind any time I was to let him know, and he’d be over again soon to talk mules at least, if nothing else, and anything he could do for me any time, just say the word, and try some of this gum, and so forth.  I was right puzzled by these here refined civilities of his until Pete comes in and tells me how the boys have stocked the old ranch with elephants and how Safety has tried to get him to tell the secret.  I tell Pete he’s done right to keep still, and then I go down to the bunk house and hear the whole thing.