“The next morning I had McClintock bring up another mule-load of goods to the plaza and open it up.  The people gathered around the same as before.

“I got out the finest line of necklaces, bracelets, hair-combs, and earrings that I carried, and had the women put ’em on.  And then I played trumps.

“Out of my last pack I opened up a half gross of hand-mirrors, with solid tinfoil backs, and passed ’em around among the ladies.  That was the first introduction of looking-glasses among the Peche Indians.

“Shane walks by with his big laugh.

“‘Business looking up any?’ he asks.

“‘It’s looking at itself right now,’ says I.

“By-and-by a kind of a murmur goes through the crowd.  The women had looked into the magic crystal and seen that they were beautiful, and was confiding the secret to the men.  The men seemed to be urging the lack of money and the hard times just before the election, but their excuses didn’t go.

“Then was my time.

“I called McClintock away from an animated conversation with his mules and told him to do some interpreting.

“’Tell ’em,’ says I, ’that gold-dust will buy for them these befitting ornaments for kings and queens of the earth.  Tell ’em the yellow sand they wash out of the waters for the High Sanctified Yacomay and Chop Suey of the tribe will buy the precious jewels and charms that will make them beautiful and preserve and pickle them from evil spirits.  Tell ’em the Pittsburgh banks are paying four per cent. interest on deposits by mail, while this get-rich-frequently custodian of the public funds ain’t even paying attention.  Keep telling ’em, Mac,’ says I, ’to let the gold-dust family do their work.  Talk to ’em like a born anti-Bryanite,’ says I.  ’Remind ’em that Tom Watson’s gone back to Georgia,’ says I.

“McClintock waves his hand affectionately at one of his mules, and then hurls a few stickfuls of minion type at the mob of shoppers.

“A gutta-percha Indian man, with a lady hanging on his arm, with three strings of my fish-scale jewelry and imitation marble beads around her neck, stands up on a block of stone and makes a talk that sounds like a man shaking dice in a box to fill aces and sixes.

“‘He says,’ says McClintock, ’that the people not know that gold-dust will buy their things.  The women very mad.  The Grand Yacuma tell them it no good but for keep to make bad spirits keep away.’

“‘You can’t keep bad spirits away from money,’ says I.

“‘They say,’ goes on McClintock, ’the Yacuma fool them.  They raise plenty row.’

“‘Going!  Going!’ says I.  ’Gold-dust or cash takes the entire stock.  The dust weighed before you, and taken at sixteen dollars the ounce—­the highest price on the Gaudymala coast.’

“Then the crowd disperses all of a sudden, and I don’t know what’s up.  Mac and me packs away the hand-mirrors and jewelry they had handed back to us, and we had the mules back to the corral they had set apart for our garage.