“Then you ain’t buyin’ it for a town?”

“But Dwight Sanderson’s selling it for a town,” Smoke baffled.  “Come on.  We’ve got to climb this slide.”

The slide was steep, and a narrow trail zigzagged up it on a formidable Jacob’s ladder.  Shorty moaned and groaned over the sharp corners and the steep pitches.

“Think of a town-site here.  They ain’t a flat space big enough for a postage-stamp.  An’ it’s the wrong side of the river.  All the freightin’ goes the other way.  Look at Dawson there.  Room to spread for forty thousand more people.  Say, Smoke.  You’re a meat-eater.  I know that.  An’ I know you ain’t buyin’ it for a town.  Then what in Heaven’s name are you buyin’ it for?”

“To sell, of course.”

“But other folks ain’t as crazy as old man Sanderson an’ you.”

“Maybe not in the same way, Shorty.  Now I’m going to take this town-site, break it up in parcels, and sell it to a lot of sane people who live over in Dawson.”

“Huh!  All Dawson’s still laughing at you an’ me an’ them eggs.  You want to make ’em laugh some more, hey?”

“I certainly do.”

“But it’s too danged expensive, Smoke.  I helped you make ’em laugh on the eggs, an’ my share of the laugh cost me nearly nine thousan’ dollars.”

“All right.  You don’t have to come in on this.  The profits will be all mine, but you’ve got to help me just the same.”

“Oh, I’ll help all right.  An’ they can laugh at me some more.  But nary a ounce do I drop this time.

“What’s old Sanderson holdin’ it at?  A couple of hundred?”

“Ten thousand.  I ought to get it for five.”

“Wisht I was a minister,” Shorty breathed fervently.

“What for?”

“So I could preach the gosh-dangdest, eloquentest sermon on a text you may have hearn—­to wit:  a fool an’ his money.”

“Come in,” they heard Dwight Sanderson yell irritably, when they knocked at his door, and they entered to find him squatted by a stone fireplace and pounding coffee wrapped in a piece of flour-sacking.

“What d’ye want?” he demanded harshly, emptying the pounded coffee into the coffee-pot that stood on the coals near the front of the fireplace.

“To talk business,” Smoke answered.  “You’ve a town-site located here, I understand.  What do you want for it?”

“Ten thousand dollars,” came the answer.  “And now that I’ve told you, you can laugh, and get out.  There’s the door.  Good-by.”

“But I don’t want to laugh.  I know plenty of funnier things to do than to climb up this cliff of yours.  I want to buy your town-site.”

“You do, eh?  Well, I’m glad to hear sense.”  Sanderson came over and sat down facing his visitors, his hands resting on the table and his eyes cocking apprehensively toward the coffee-pot.  “I’ve told you my price, and I ain’t ashamed to tell you again—­ten thousand.  And you can laugh or buy, it’s all one to me.”