d 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