“Bring on them eggs, you pirates,” he commenced.  “An’ after this day, if you know what’s good for you, never mention eggs to me again.”

They began on the miscellaneous assortment of the original corner, all three men counting.  When two hundred had been reached, Wild Water suddenly cracked an egg on the edge of the table and opened it deftly with his thumbs.

“Hey!  Hold on!” Shorty objected.

“It’s my egg, ain’t it?” Wild Water snarled.  “I’m paying ten dollars for it, ain’t I?  But I ain’t buying no pig in a poke.  When I cough up ten bucks an egg I want to know what I’m gettin’.”

“If you don’t like it, I’ll eat it,” Shorty volunteered maliciously.

Wild Water looked and smelled and shook his head.  “No, you don’t, Shorty.  That’s a good egg.  Gimme a pail.  I’m goin’ to eat it myself for supper.”

Thrice again Wild Water cracked good eggs experimentally and put them in the pail beside him.

“Two more than you figgered, Shorty,” he said at the end of the count.  “Nine hundred an’ sixty-four, not sixty-two.”

“My mistake,” Shorty acknowledged handsomely.  “We’ll throw ’em in for good measure.”

“Guess you can afford to,” Wild Water accepted grimly.  “Pass the batch.  Nine thousan’ six hundred an’ twenty dollars.  I’ll pay for it now.  Write a receipt, Smoke.”

“Why not count the rest,” Smoke suggested, “and pay all at once?”

Wild Water shook his head.  “I’m no good at figgers.  One batch at a time an’ no mistakes.”

Going to his fur coat, from each of the side pockets he drew forth two sacks of dust, so rotund and long that they resembled bologna sausages.  When the first batch had been paid for, there remained in the gold-sacks not more than several hundred dollars.

A soap-box was carried to the table, and the count of the three thousand began.  At the end of one hundred, Wild Water struck an egg sharply against the edge of the table.  There was no crack.  The resultant sound was like that of the striking of a sphere of solid marble.

“Frozen solid,” he remarked, striking more sharply.

He held the egg up, and they could see the shell powdered to minute fragments along the line of impact.

“Huh!” said Shorty.  “It ought to be solid, seein’ it has just been freighted up from Forty Mile.  It’ll take an ax to bust it.”

“Me for the ax,” said Wild Water.

Smoke brought the ax, and Wild Water, with the clever hand and eye of the woodsman, split the egg cleanly in half.  The appearance of the egg’s interior was anything but satisfactory.  Smoke felt a premonitory chill.  Shorty was more valiant.  He held one of the halves to his nose.

“Smells all right,” he said.

“But it looks all wrong,” Wild Water contended.  “An’ how can it smell when the smell’s frozen along with the rest of it?  Wait a minute.”