Then Chicken knew that he must make one of those desperate, nerve-shattering plunges into speculation that fortune sometimes requires of those who would win her favour.  Five cents was his capital, and this he must risk against the chance of winning what lay within the close grasp of the youngster’s chubby hand.  It was a fearful lottery, Chicken knew.  But he must accomplish his end by strategy, since he had a wholesome terror of plundering infants by force.  Once, in a park, driven by hunger, he had committed an onslaught upon a bottle of peptonized infant’s food in the possession of an occupant of a baby carriage.  The outraged infant had so promptly opened its mouth and pressed the button that communicated with the welkin that help arrived, and Chicken did his thirty days in a snug coop.  Wherefore he was, as he said, “leary of kids.”

Beginning artfully to question the boy concerning his choice of sweets, he gradually drew out the information he wanted.  Mamma said he was to ask the drug store man for ten cents’ worth of paregoric in the bottle; he was to keep his hand shut tight over the dollar; he must not stop to talk to anyone in the street; he must ask the drug-store man to wrap up the change and put it in the pocket of his trousers.  Indeed, they had pockets—­two of them!  And he liked chocolate creams best.

Chicken went into the store and turned plunger.  He invested his entire capital in C.A.N.D.Y. stocks, simply to pave the way to the greater risk following.

He gave the sweets to the youngster, and had the satisfaction of perceiving that confidence was established.  After that it was easy to obtain leadership of the expedition; to take the investment by the hand and lead it to a nice drug store he knew of in the same block.  There Chicken, with a parental air, passed over the dollar and called for the medicine, while the boy crunched his candy, glad to be relieved of the responsibility of the purchase.  And then the successful investor, searching his pockets, found an overcoat button—­the extent of his winter trousseau—­and, wrapping it carefully, placed the ostensible change in the pocket of confiding juvenility.  Setting the youngster’s face homeward, and patting him benevolently on the back—­for Chicken’s heart was as soft as those of his feathered namesakes—­the speculator quit the market with a profit of 1,700 per cent. on his invested capital.

Two hours later an Iron Mountain freight engine pulled out of the railroad yards, Texas bound, with a string of empties.  In one of the cattle cars, half buried in excelsior, Chicken lay at ease.  Beside him in his nest was a quart bottle of very poor whisky and a paper bag of bread and cheese.  Mr. Ruggles, in his private car, was on his trip south for the winter season.