Safety says that may all be true, but, mark his words, the minute my herd gets into inland waters it will develop some kind of disease like anthrax or blackleg, and the whole bunch will die on me.  Sandy says it will be a simple matter to vaccinate, because the animals will be as affectionate as kittens by that time through having been kindly handled, which is all a whale needs.  He says they really got a very social nature and are loyal unto death.  Once a whale is your friend, he says, it’s for life, rain or shine, just so long as you treat him square.  Even do a whale a favour just once and he’ll remember your face, make no difference if it’s fifty years; though being the same, it is true, in his hatreds, because a whale never forgives an injury.  A sailor he happens to know once give a whale he had made friends with a chew of tobacco just for a joke and the animal got into an awful rage and tried to tear the ship down to get at him, and then he followed the ship all over the world waiting for this sailor to fall off or get wrecked or something, till finally the hunted man got so nervous he quit the sea and is now running a news stand in Seattle, if Safety don’t believe it.  It just goes to show that a whale as long as you’re square with him is superior in mind and morals to a steer, which ain’t got sense enough to know friend from foe.

Safety still shakes his head.  He says “safe and sane” has been his motto throughout a long and busy life and this here proposition don’t sound like neither one to him.  The boys tell him he’s missing a good thing by not throwing in with us.  They say I’m giving ’em each a big block of stock, paid up and non-assessable, and they don’t want him to come round later when they’re rolling in wealth and ask why they didn’t give him a chance too.

“I can just hear you talk,” said Sandy.  “You’ll be saying:  ’I knew that whole fool bunch when not one ever had a dollar he could call his own the day after he was paid off, and now look at ’em—­throwing their hundreds of thousands right and left; houses with pianos in every room; new boots every week; silver-mounted saddles at a thousand each; choice wines, liquors, and cigars; private taxicabs; and Alexander J. Sawtelle, the wealthy banker, being elected to Congress by an overwhelming majority!’ That’s the way you’ll be talking,” said Sandy, “with regret eating into your vitals like some horrible acid that is fatal to man and beast.”

Safety says he thinks they’re all plumb crazy, and a fool and his money is soon parted—­this being a saying he must have learned at the age of three and has never forgotten a word of—­and he comes up to the house to see me.  Mebbe he wanted to find out if I had really lost my mind, but he said nothing about whales.  Just set round and talked the usual hard luck.  Been in the stock business thirty years and never had a good year yet.  Nothing left of his cattle but the running gear; and his land so poor you couldn’t even raise a row