Pretty soon Sandy reports to me.  He says Safety is hurt at my cold manner to an old friend and neighbour that’s always running in with a jar of honey or some knickknack; and he had mentioned the runt mules, saying he might be induced to consider ’em though I probably won’t let ’em go for any mere song, contemptible as they are.  Sandy says he’s right; that it’s got to be a whole opera with words and music for them mules.  He says I got a reason for acting firm about the price, the reason being that this new line I’m going to embark in is such a sure thing that I want only friends to come in, and I got to be convinced first that their heart is in the right place.

Safety says his heart is always getting the best of his head in stock deals, but just how foolish will I expect an old and tried friend to seem about these scrub mules that nobody in his right mind would touch at any price.

Sandy yawns like he was weary of it all and says a hundred dollars flat.  He said Safety just stood still and looked at him forever without batting an eye, till he got rattled and said that mebbe ninety-five might be considered.  That’s a trick with this old robber when a party’s got something to sell him.  They tell their price and he just keeps still and looks at ’em—­not indignant nor astonished, not even interested, but merely fishlike.  Most people can’t stand it long, it’s that uncanny.  They get fussed and nervous, and weaken before he’s said a single word.

But it was certain now that the mystery was getting to Safety, because otherwise he’d have laughed his head off at the mention of a hundred dollars for these mules.  Three months before he’d heard me himself offer ’em for forty a head.  You see, when I bought bands of mules from time to time I’d made the sellers throw in the little ones to go free with the trade.  I now had twenty-five or so, but it had begun to get to me that mebbe those sellers hadn’t been so easy as I thought at the time.  They was knotty-headed little runts that I’d never bothered to handle.

Last spring I had the boys chink up the cracks in the corral and put each one of the cunning little mites into the chute and roach it so as to put a bow in its neck; then I put the bunch on good green feed where they would fatten and shed off; but it was wasted effort.  They looked so much like field mice I was afraid that cats would make a mistake.  After they got fat the biggest one looked as if he’d weigh close up to seven hundred and fifty.  It was when they had begun to buy mules too; that is to say, mules!  But no such luck as a new West Pointer coming to inspect these; nothing but wise old cavalry captains that when they put an eye on the bunch would grin friendly at me and hesitate only long enough to put some water in the radiator.  I bet there never was a bunch of three-year-old mules that stood so much condemning.

After offering ’em for forty a head one time to a party and having him answer very simply by asking how the road was on beyond and which turn did he take, I quit bothering.  After that when buyers come along I told the truth and said I didn’t have any mules.  I had to keep my real ones, and it wasn’t worth while showing those submules.  And this was the bunch Sandy had told S.F.  Timmins he could take away for a hundred a head—­or even ninety-five.  And Safety hadn’t laughed!