Smoke Bellew

“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.”

To show his indifference he drummed with his knobby knuckles on the table and stared at the coffee-pot. A minute later he began to hum a monotonous “Tra-la-loo, tra-la-lee, tra-la-lee, tra-la-loo.”

“Now look here, Mr. Sanderson,” said Smoke. “This town-site isn’t worth ten thousand. If it was worth that much it would be worth a hundred thousand just as easily. If it isn’t worth a hundred thousand – and you know it isn’t – then it isn’t worth ten cents.”

Sanderson drummed with his knuckles and hummed, “Tra-la-loo, tra-la-lee,” until the coffee-pot boiled over. Settling it with a part cup of cold water, and placing it to one side of the warm hearth, he resumed his seat. “How much will you offer?” he asked of Smoke.

“Five thousand.”

Shorty groaned.

Again came an interval of drumming and of tra-loo-ing and tra-lee-ing.

“You ain’t no fool,” Sanderson announced to Smoke. “You said if it wasn’t worth a hundred thousand it wasn’t worth ten cents. Yet you offer five thousand for it. Then it IS worth a hundred thousand.”

“You can’t make twenty cents out of it,” Smoke replied heatedly. “Not if you stayed here till you rot.”

“I’ll make it out of you.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Then I reckon I’ll stay an’ rot,” Sanderson answered with an air of finality.

He took no further notice of his guests, and went about his culinary tasks as if he were alone. When he had warmed over a pot of beans and a slab of sour-dough bread, he set the table for one and proceeded to eat.

“No, thank you,” Shorty murmured. “We ain’t a bit hungry. We et just before we come.”

“Let’s see your papers,” Smoke said at last. Sanderson fumbled under the head of his bunk and tossed out a package of documents. “It’s all tight and right,” he said. “That long one there, with the big seals, come all the way from Ottawa. Nothing territorial about that. The national Canadian government cinches me in the possession of this town-site.”

“How many lots you sold in the two years you’ve had it?” Shorty queried.

“None of your business,” Sanderson answered sourly. “There ain’t no law against a man living alone on his town-site if he wants to.”

“I’ll give you five thousand,” Smoke said. Sanderson shook his head.

“I don’t know which is the craziest,” Shorty lamented. “Come outside a minute, Smoke. I want to whisper to you.”

Reluctantly Smoke yielded to his partner’s persuasions.

“Ain’t it never entered your head,” Shorty said, as they stood in the snow outside the door, “that they’s miles an’ miles of cliffs on both sides of this fool town-site that don’t belong to nobody an’ that you can have for the locatin’ and stakin’?”

“They won’t do,” Smoke answered.

“Why won’t they?”

“It makes you wonder, with all those miles and miles, why I’m buying this particular spot, doesn’t it?”

“It sure does,” Shorty agreed.

“And that’s the very point,” Smoke went on triumphantly. “If it makes you wonder, it will make others wonder. And when they wonder they’ll come a-running. By your own wondering you prove it’s sound psychology. Now, Shorty, listen to me; I’m going to hand Dawson a package that will knock the spots out of the egg-laugh. Come on inside.”

“Hello,” said Sanderson, as they re-entered. “I thought I’d seen the last of you.”

“Now what is your lowest figure?” Smoke asked.

“Twenty thousand.”

“I’ll give you ten thousand.”

“All right, I’ll sell at that figure. It’s all I wanted in the first place. But when will you pay the dust over?”