By this time they’re shipping thousands of steer elephants at top prices; they catch ’em up off soft feed and fatten ’em on popcorn and peanuts, and every Thanksgiving they send a nice fat calf down to the White House, for no one looks at turkey any more.  Sandy is now telling what a snap it will be to ride herd on elephants.

“You pick out a big one,” he says, “and you build a little cupalo up on top of him and climb up into it by means of a ladder, and set there in this little furnished room with a good book, and smoke and pass the time away while your good old saddle elephant does the work.  All you got to do is lean out of the front window now and then and jab him in the forehead with an ice pick, whichever way you want him to turn.”

I said trust a cow-puncher to think up some way where he’d have to do as little work with his hands as he does with his head.  But I admitted they seemed to have landed on old Timmins for once, because he had tried to get Pete to betray the secret and then come wheedling round to me about it.  I said I could talk more intelligently next time, and he would sure come again because he had lavished two sticks of gum on me, which was an incredible performance and could not have been done except for an evil purpose.

“Now say,” says Sandy, “that does look like we got him believing.  I was going to kid him along about once more, then spring elephants on him, and we’d all have a good laugh at the old wolf.  But it looks to me like a chance for better than a laugh; it looks to me like we might commit a real crime against him.”

“He never carries anything on him,” I says, “if you’re meaning something plain, like highway robbery.”

Sandy says he don’t mean that; he means real Wall Street stuff, such as one gentleman can pull on another and still keep loose; crooked, he says, but not rough.  I ask what is the idea, and Sandy says get him more and more feverish about the vast returns from this secret enterprise.  Then we’ll cut out a bunch of culls—­thin stuff and runts and cripples—­and make him give about four times what they’re worth on a promise to let him into the new deal; tell him we must be rid of this stuff to make room for the new animals, and naturally we’ll favour our friends.

“There, now!” says Sandy.  “I should be in Wall Street this minute, being able to think up a coop as pernicious as that:  and I would of been there, too, only I hate city life.”

“For once in the world’s history,” I says, “there may be a grain of sense in your words.  Only no cows in the deal.  Even to defraud the old crook I wouldn’t let him have hide nor hair of a beef, not since he worked on my feelings in the matter of them bull calves two years ago.  Mules, yes.  But the cow is too worthy a beast to be mixed up in anything sinful I put over on that profiteer.  Now I’ll tell you what,” I says, very businesslike:  “you boys tole him along till he gets hectic enough to take that bunch of mule runts down in the south field, and anything you get over fifty dollars a head I’ll split with you.”