“You’re luckier at finding eggs than me,” Wild Water admitted.  “Now, how many eggs have you got now?—­an’ how much dust do I tote up the hill?”

Smoke consulted his notebook.  “As it stands now, according to Shorty’s figures, we’ve three thousand nine hundred and sixty-two eggs.  Multiply by ten—­”

“Forty thousand dollars!” Wild Water bellowed.  “You said there was only something like nine hundred eggs.  It’s a stickup!  I won’t stand for it!”

Smoke drew the contract from his pocket and pointed to the pay on delivery.  “No mention is made of the number of eggs to be delivered.  You agreed to pay ten dollars for every egg we delivered to you.  Well, we’ve got the eggs, and a signed contract is a signed contract.  Honestly, though, Wild Water, we didn’t know about those other eggs until afterward.  Then we had to buy them in order to make our corner good.”

For five long minutes, in choking silence, Wild Water fought a battle with himself, then reluctantly gave in.

“I’m in bad,” he said brokenly.  “The landscape’s fair sproutin’ eggs.  An’ the quicker I get out the better.  There might come a landslide of ’em.  I’ll be there at two o’clock.  But forty thousand dollars!”

“It’s only thirty-nine thousand six hundred an’ twenty,” Smoke corrected.  “It’ll weigh two hundred pounds,” Wild Water raved on.  “I’ll have to freight it up with a dog-team.”

“We’ll lend you our teams to carry the eggs away,” Smoke volunteered.

“But where’ll I cache ’em?  Never mind.  I’ll be there.  But as long as I live I’ll never eat another egg.  I’m full sick of ’em.”

At half-past one, doubling the dog-teams for the steep pitch of the hill, Shorty arrived with Gautereaux’s eggs.  “We dang near double our winnings,” Shorty told Smoke, as they piled the soap-boxes inside the cabin.  “I holds ‘m down to eight dollars, an’ after he cussed loco in French he falls for it.  Now that’s two dollars clear profit to us for each egg, an’ they’re three thousan’ of ’em.  I paid ’m in full.  Here’s the receipt.”

While Smoke got out the gold-scales and prepared for business, Shorty devoted himself to calculation.

“There’s the figgers,” he announced triumphantly.  “We win twelve thousan’ nine hundred an’ seventy dollars.  An’ we don’t do Wild Water no harm.  He wins Miss Arral.  Besides, he gets all them eggs.  It’s sure a bargain-counter all around.  Nobody loses.”

“Even Gautereaux’s twenty-four thousand to the good,” Smoke laughed, “minus, of course, what the eggs and the freighting cost him.  And if Wild Water plays the corner, he may make a profit out of the eggs himself.”

Promptly at two o’clock, Shorty, peeping, saw Wild Water coming up the hill.  When he entered he was brisk and businesslike.  He took off his big bearskin coat, hung it on a nail, and sat down at the table.