And would you have wondered when he sifts in a couple days later and makes me a cold offer of sixty dollars a head for this choice livestock?  Yes, sir!  He says “Live and let live” is his motto, and he wants to prove that I have wronged him in the past if I ever had the faintest suspicion that he wasn’t the ideal party to have in on a deal that was going to net everyone concerned a handsome fortune.  He says the fact is money goes through his fingers like water if you come right down to it; and sixty or even sixty-five if I want to push him to extremes, because he’s the last man on God’s green earth to let five dollars split up old neighbours that ought to be hand and glove in any new deal that come up.

It like to of keeled me over, but I recovered and become busier than ever and got out my bank book and begun to figure over that.  I said Sandy Sawtelle had the handling of this particular bunch of my assets and I couldn’t be bothered by it.

So he mooches down to the barn till Sandy come in with Buck Devine.  They was chattering about three hundred thousand dollars in round numbers when they got near enough for him to overhear their private conversation.  They wondered why they had wasted so much of their lives in the cattle business, but now them old hard-working days was over, or soon would be, with nothing to do but travel round in Pullman palace cars and see America first, and go to movies, and so forth.  Safety wished to haggle some about the mules, but Sandy says he’s already stated the price in clear, ringing tones, and he has no time to waste, being that I must send him down that night to get an order on the wire for two carloads of the Little Giant peanut.  Safety just blinked at this, not even asking why the peanuts; and the boys left him cold.

When I told ’em about the offer to me of sixty or a possible sixty-five, they at once done a medicine dance.

“This here will be the richest coop ever pulled off west of Cheyenne,” says Buck; and Sandy says he guesses anybody not blind can now see that well-known street in New York he ought to have his office on.  He says he hopes Safety don’t fall too easy, because he wants more chance to work it up.

But Sandy is doomed to disappointment.  Safety holds off only two days more.  Two days he loafs round at mealtimes, listening to their rich converse and saying he’d like to know who’s a better friend of this outfit than he’s been for twenty years.  The boys tell him if he’s such a good friend to go ahead and prove it with a little barter that would be sure to touch my heart.  And the first day Safety offers seventy-five a head for these here jack rabbits, which they calmly ignore and go on talking about Liberty Bonds being a good safe investment; and the second day he just cries like a child that he’ll pay eighty-five and trust to their honour that he’s to have in on this new sure-thing deal.