Smoke Bellew

“Hey! Shorty!” Smoke called across the main street to his partner, who was trudging along in his swift, slack-jointed way, a naked bottle with frozen contents conspicuously tucked under his arm. Smoke crossed over.

“Where have you been all morning? Been looking for you everywhere.”

“Up to Doc’s,” Shorty answered, holding out the bottle. “Something’s wrong with Sally. I seen last night, at feedin’-time, the hair on her tail an’ flanks was fallin’ out. The Doc says – ”

“Never mind that,” Smoke broke in impatiently. “What I want – ”

“What’s eatin’ you?” Shorty demanded in indignant astonishment. “An’ Sally gettin’ naked bald in this crimpy weather! I tell you that dog’s sick. Doc says – ”

“Let Sally wait. Listen to me – ”

“I tell you she can’t wait. It’s cruelty to animals. She’ll be frost-bit. What are you in such a fever about anyway? Has that Monte Cristo strike proved up?”

“I don’t know, Shorty. But I want you to do me a favor.”

“Sure,” Shorty said gallantly, immediately appeased and acquiescent. “What is it? Let her rip. Me for you.”

“I want you to buy eggs for me – ”

“Sure, an’ Floridy water an’ talcum powder, if you say the word. An’ poor Sally sheddin’ something scand’lous! Look here, Smoke, if you want to go in for high livin’ you go an’ buy your own eggs. Beans an’ bacon’s good enough for me.”

“I am going to buy, but I want you to help me to buy. Now, shut up, Shorty. I’ve got the floor. You go right straight to Slavovitch’s. Pay as high as three dollars, but buy all he’s got.”

“Three dollars!” Shorty groaned. “An’ I heard tell only yesterday that he’s got all of seven hundred in stock! Twenty-one hundred dollars for hen-fruit! Say, Smoke, I tell you what. You run right up and see the Doc. He’ll tend to your case. An’ he’ll only charge you an ounce for the first prescription. So-long, I gotta to be pullin’ my freight.”

He started off, but Smoke caught his partner by the shoulder, arresting his progress and whirling him around.

“Smoke, I’d sure do anything for you,” Shorty protested earnestly. “If you had a cold in the head an’ was layin’ with both arms broke, I’d set by your bedside, day an’ night, an’ wipe your nose for you. But I’ll be everlastin’ly damned if I’ll squander twenty-one hundred good iron dollars on hen-fruit for you or any other two-legged man.”

“They’re not your dollars, but mine, Shorty. It’s a deal I have on. What I’m after is to corner every blessed egg in Dawson, in the Klondike, on the Yukon. You’ve got to help me out. I haven’t the time to tell you of the inwardness of the deal. I will afterward, and let you go half on it if you want to. But the thing right now is to get the eggs. Now you hustle up to Slavovitch’s and buy all he’s got.”

“But what’ll I tell ‘m? He’ll sure know I ain’t goin’ to eat ‘em.”

“Tell him nothing. Money talks. He sells them cooked for two dollars. Offer him up to three for them uncooked. If he gets curious, tell him you’re starting a chicken ranch. What I want is the eggs. And then keep on; nose out every egg in Dawson and buy it. Understand? Buy it! That little joint across the street from Slavovitch’s has a few. Buy them. I’m going over to Klondike City. There’s an old man there, with a bad leg, who’s broke and who has six dozen. He’s held them all winter for the rise, intending to get enough out of them to pay his passage back to Seattle. I’ll see he gets his passage, and I’ll get the eggs. Now hustle. And they say that little woman down beyond the sawmill who makes moccasins has a couple of dozen.”

“All right, if you say so, Smoke. But Slavovitch seems the main squeeze. I’ll just get an iron-bound option, black an’ white, an’ gather in the scatterin’ first.”

“All right. Hustle. And I’ll tell you the scheme tonight.”

But Shorty flourished the bottle. “I’m goin’ to doctor up Sally first. The eggs can wait that long. If they ain’t all eaten, they won’t be eaten while I’m takin’ care of a poor sick dog that’s saved your life an’ mine more ‘n once.”

Never was a market cornered more quickly. In three days every known egg in Dawson, with the exception of several dozen, was in the hands of Smoke and Shorty. Smoke had been more liberal in purchasing. He unblushingly pleaded guilty to having given the old man in Klondike City five dollars apiece for his seventy-two eggs. Shorty had bought most of the eggs, and he had driven bargains. He had given only two dollars an egg to the woman who made moccasins, and he prided himself that he had come off fairly well with Slavovitch, whose seven hundred and fifteen eggs he had bought at a flat rate of two dollars and a half. On the other hand, he grumbled because the little restaurant across the street had held him up for two dollars and seventy-five cents for a paltry hundred and thirty-four eggs.

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?”

Smoke nodded, and continued to nod to each question.

“He’s got one cheek half gone where a bald-face grizzly swatted him. Am I right? He’s a dog-trader – right, eh? His name is Scar-Face Jim. That’s so, ain’t it? D’ye get my drift?”

“You mean we’ve been bidding – ?”

“Against each other. Sure thing. That squaw’s his wife, an’ they keep house on the hill back of the hospital. I could ‘a’ got them eggs for two a throw if you hadn’t butted in.”

“And so could I,” Smoke laughed, “if you’d kept out, blame you! But it doesn’t amount to anything. We know that we’ve got the corner. That’s the big thing.”

Shorty spent the next hour wrestling with a stub of a pencil on the margin of a three-year-old newspaper, and the more interminable and hieroglyphic grew his figures the more cheerful he became.

“There she stands,” he said at last. “Pretty? I guess yes. Lemme give you the totals. You an’ me has right now in our possession exactly nine hundred an’ seventy-three eggs. They cost us exactly two thousand, seven hundred an’ sixty dollars, reckonin’ dust at sixteen an ounce an’ not countin’ time. An’ now listen to me. If we stick up Wild Water for ten dollars a egg we stand to win, clean net an’ all to the good, just exactly six thousand nine hundred and seventy dollars. Now that’s a book-makin’ what is, if anybody should ride up on a dog-sled an’ ask you. An’ I’m in half on it! Put her there, Smoke. I’m that thankful I’m sure droolin’ gratitude. Book-makin’! Say, I’d sooner run with the chicks than the ponies any day.”

At eleven that night Smoke was routed from sound sleep by Shorty, whose fur parka exhaled an atmosphere of keen frost and whose hand was extremely cold in its contact with Smoke’s cheek.

“What is it now?” Smoke grumbled. “Rest of Sally’s hair fallen out?”

“Nope. But I just had to tell you the good news. I seen Slavovitch. Or Slavovitch seen me, I guess, because he started the seance. He says to me: ‘Shorty, I want to speak to you about them eggs. I’ve kept it quiet. Nobody knows I sold ‘em to you. But if you’re speculatin’, I can put you wise to a good thing.’ An’ he did, too, Smoke. Now what’d you guess that good thing is?”

“Go on. Name it.”