The several dozen not yet gathered in were in the hands of two persons.  One, with whom Shorty was dealing, was an Indian woman who lived in a cabin on the hill back of the hospital.

“I’ll get her to-day,” Shorty announced next morning.  “You wash the dishes, Smoke.  I’ll be back in a jiffy, if I don’t bust myself a-shovin’ dust at her.  Gimme a man to deal with every time.  These blamed women—­it’s something sad the way they can hold out on a buyer.  The only way to get ’em is sellin’.  Why, you’d think them eggs of hern was solid nuggets.”

In the afternoon, when Smoke returned to the cabin, he found Shorty squatted on the floor, rubbing ointment into Sally’s tail, his countenance so expressionless that it was suspicious.

“What luck?” Shorty asked carelessly, after several minutes had passed.

“Nothing doing,” Smoke answered.  “How did you get on with the squaw?”

Shorty cocked his head triumphantly toward a tin pail of eggs on the table.  “Seven dollars a clatter, though,” he confessed, after another minute of silent rubbing.

“I offered ten dollars finally,” Smoke said, “and then the fellow told me he’d already sold his eggs.  Now that looks bad, Shorty.  Somebody else is in the market.  Those twenty-eight eggs are liable to cause us trouble.  You see, the success of the corner consists in holding every last—­”

He broke off to stare at his partner.  A pronounced change was coming over Shorty—­one of agitation masked by extreme deliberation.  He closed the salve-box, wiped his hands slowly and thoroughly on Sally’s furry coat, stood up, went over to the corner and looked at the thermometer, and came back again.  He spoke in a low, toneless, and super-polite voice.

“Do you mind kindly just repeating over how many eggs you said the man didn’t sell to you?” he asked.

“Twenty-eight.”

“Hum,” Shorty communed to himself, with a slight duck of the head of careless acknowledgment.  Then he glanced with slumbering anger at the stove.  “Smoke, we’ll have to dig up a new stove.  That fire-box is burned plumb into the oven so it blacks the biscuits.”

“Let the fire-box alone,” Smoke commanded, “and tell me what’s the matter.”

“Matter?  An’ you want to know what’s the matter?  Well, kindly please direct them handsome eyes of yourn at that there pail settin’ on the table.  See it?”

Smoke nodded.

“Well, I want to tell you one thing, just one thing.  They’s just exactly, preecisely, nor nothin’ more or anythin’ less’n twenty-eight eggs in the pail, an’ they cost, every danged last one of ’em, just exactly seven great big round iron dollars a throw.  If you stand in cryin’ need of any further items of information, I’m willin’ and free to impart.”

“Go on,” Smoke requested.

“Well, that geezer you was dickerin’ with is a big buck Indian.  Am I right?”