Sandy hollers at this.  He says this bunch ain’t mules but rabbits, and that I wouldn’t refuse forty a head for ’em this minute.  He says even a man expecting to be let in on a sure-thing elephant ranch would know something wicked was meant if asked to give even as much as fifty dollars for these insects.  I tell him all very true; but this is just the margin for his lasting financial genius which he displays so little reticence about that it’ll get into the papers and make him a marked man from coast to coast if he ain’t careful.  He says oh, all right, if I want to take it that way, and he’ll see what he can do.  Mebbe he can get fifty-five a head, which would not only give the boys a good laugh but provide a little torch money.

I left ’em plotting against a man that had never been touched by any plot whatever.  I resolved to remain kind of aloof from their nefarious doings.  It didn’t seem quite dignified for one of my standing to be mixed up in a deal so crooked—­at least no more than necessary to get my share of the pickings.

Sure enough, the very next day here come the depraved old outcast marauding round again at lunch time and et with the boys in the kitchen.  He found ’em full of suppressed excitement and secret speech and careless talk about large sums of money.  It must of been like sweetest music to his ears.  One says how much would it be safe to count on cutting up the first year—­how much in round numbers; and another would say that in round numbers, what with the expense of getting started and figuring everything down to the last cent, it wouldn’t be safe to count on more than a hundred thousand dollars; but, of course, for the second year, now, why it would be nearer two hundred thousand in round numbers, even figuring everything fine and making big allowance for shrinkage.  After that they handed money back and forth in round numbers till they got sick of the sound of it.

They said Safety set and listened in a trance, only waking up now and then to see if he couldn’t goad someone into revealing the name of this new animal.  But they always foiled him.  Sandy Sawtelle drew an affecting picture of himself being cut off by high living at the age of ninety, leaving six or eight million dollars in round numbers and having his kin folks squabble over his will till the lawyers got most of it.  They said Safety hardly et a morsel and had an evil glitter in his eyes.

And after lunch he went out to the woodpile where old Pete was working and offered him two bits in money to tell him the secret, and when old Pete scorned him he raised it to four bits.  I guess the idea of any one refusing money merely for a little talk had never seemed possible to him.  He must of thought there was sure something in it.  I was away that day, but when I got back and heard about his hellish attempt to bribe old Pete I told the boys they sure had the chance of a lifetime.  I said if there was a mite of financial prowess in the bunch they would start the price on them runt mules at one hundred dollars flat, because it was certain that Safety had struck the skids.